Walking through the crooked embankment, at the intersection of the six groups of Luhua Village, downhill is a path covered with poplar trees on both sides. At the end of the path, there is a quietly flowing Songzi River, because it is a tributary of the big river in the north, so the old people also call it "Little River".
On this side of the small river is Luhua Village in Zhijiang City, Hubei Province, and on the other side of the small river is Songzi City in Jingzhou City.
At the end of the poplar forest, by the small river, there was a dilapidated tile house. This tile house is said to have been left by the old Li Tou who was farming in this area, and the old Li Tou had no children and no daughters, and after his death, the house has been abandoned. Now in this tile house lives my mother-in-law, Yang Yulan.
The mother-in-law was not originally a person from this side, but a girl from Yang Jia'an on the other side of the river. When he was young, he washed clothes by the river, and he met Zeng Zheyou, a fisherman in Luhua Village, who raised his eyebrows and made love.
Because of the long-standing land dispute on both sides of the river, some of the historical problems left behind have an "unspoken rule" that everyone tacitly agrees to - no intermarriage. That Zeng Zheyou, who was also a flesh-and-blood Fang Gang young man, refused the family's arranged family affairs, supported a small fishing boat, and went with the waves, completely cutting off contact with the family.
Later, someone said that his fishing boat overturned, and his five big and three thick heads were swallowed by big fish. Some people say that he supported a small fishing boat, took a big boat, went to Shanghai, started a business, and became a rich big boss.
Not to mention him, this man never appeared again.
Yang Yulan on the other side of the river, the family is well-off, has studied private school for several years, not to say that everyone is a bridesmaid, but also a small family jasper, partial to go with the fisherman. Yang Yulan is a little small, over the marriageable age, do not want to add to the blockage of the family, rolled up a few pieces of clothing and a few poetry books, in the winter when the river runs out, half touched and half waded across the river, to the side of the river, after most of the life.
These stories are also sporadically heard from others, and my mother-in-law has never mentioned them to me.
My mother-in-law is not actually my mother-in-law, I am a child picked up by my mother-in-law. I don't know if she was born thin and difficult to raise, or if the girl was rejected. When my mother-in-law picked me up, it was late autumn, when the reeds by the river were at their peak.
At that time, the mother-in-law was cutting reed poles and preparing to go home to tie the flower curtains. Hearing my hissing, I was startled at first, and then I slowly pulled open the deep reed bush and found me in the depths of the reeds. I was lying in an old bamboo basket with a red futon underneath me, and my little face was already ugly.
My mother-in-law dropped her scythe, clapped her hands on her pants, carefully picked me up, kissed me, and stroked me, as if picking up a pearl in a reed field, and I smiled.
My mother-in-law raised two sheep, I grew up drinking goat's milk, and my mother-in-law also had an acre and a half of land to grow some grains and cotton.
We lived in the farthest part of the village, as if isolated from the rest of the world, as if it were a paradise, nothing more than a little harder life. When I reached school age, I couldn't afford to go to school, so my mother-in-law taught me to read and write poetry.
It turned out that it was not from one, two or three to write, but first learned to write the name "Linglong", which was too difficult, and it took a long time to learn.
In the spring, I grow cottonseed with my mother-in-law. At the end of March, the cultivation of soil began, and there was a lot of good soil by the small river, which was pulled to our field by a small board truck and piled up.
The mother-in-law then used something called a "bowl planter" to insert it into the mound, and then lifted it up, and with a foot pedal, a round solid soil tube fell out, and there was a nest on the top, where it was specially used to put cottonseeds, and this round soil cylinder was called "nutrition bowl".
The mother-in-law is old, and she can't pedal many times a day, but fortunately, there are not many fields in our fields. When my mother-in-law stepped on it, I swung it, arranged the nutrition bowls into a small square, and then put the cotton seeds I bought into the nest.
Until there is a cotton seed in each nest, the mother-in-law uses some broken soil, lays a thin layer on the small square, in order to keep warm, and finally puts up a plastic film for them, seals it at night, presses it with soil or bricks on the side, and after the temperature rises in the morning, open the plastic film and let them breathe.
Every day I crouched at the edge of the field and waited for the cottonseeds to germinate, and when they sprouted, they could be transplanted into the field, and then slowly grow taller, and then flower, and the cotton peaches were formed. When the cotton peaches have exploded into snow-white cotton, it is already golden autumn and October.
My mother-in-law said that she would send me to school after saving enough money, and I was almost ten years old at that time. But if you can't go to school, it really doesn't matter much to me.
Those things I learned in the land have strengthened my strength throughout my life.
When I was young, my mother-in-law always said something I couldn't understand. For example, she said that the big green worms and moths are the attackers of the crops, and what we have to do is to guard the spring, and if we guard the spring, the rice tank can be full. She said that cotton is a star that falls from the sky, and it is interesting for us to collect stars to sell for money.
When the cold wind was biting, she pushed open our creaky wooden door and went out to carry firewood in, and said: "What a sharp and sharp wind, it hurts! I didn't understand: Is the wind visible? Is there a shape and a taste? Why is it not only pointed, but also spicy?
When I grew up, I found that she was really a natural poet. Her poetry, her unrealistic romance, grew stronger and stronger in her miserable life, and then affected me.
In the late autumn, when there is nothing to live in the field, the mother-in-law sits quietly by the river, smoking leaf cigarettes and knocking on the pot from time to time. Looking in the direction of the small river, the other side of the river was her hometown, but she had never crossed it again in her life. The reeds on the shore were all blooming, gently blooming, swaying with the wind, rustling.
I'm getting older and she's getting older. I used the money I earned to collect stars to go to school, and because she taught me so many words and a lot of life foundations, it was not so difficult to catch up with my peers.
When I go to college, I don't need her to farm for me, I do tutoring, work-study, winter and summer vacation work, I can support my mother-in-law. But at that time, she was also more than eighty years old, and she had reached her twilight years. Start to ear the back, and talk to her with a roar to barely hear.
"Mother-in-law, you said that I was picked up by you, is it really fake?"
"You're a reed, and the little youkai came."
Nonsense started again.
"Mother-in-law, they all say you're waiting for someone, who is he?"
More than once I poked into her secrets from her youth.
The mother-in-law didn't seem to hear, and looked in the direction of the small river, and took a sip of leaf smoke. Her face has wrinkled like me who was abandoned in the reed field, but there is still light in her eyes, probably that light, which supports the romance of her life, the poetry of this life, the waiting of this life! Why else would she name me "Linglong"? Linglong dice An Hongdou is a bone-deep acacia!
None of us spoke, the wind blew the reeds, the sand... sand...... sand......
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