My father suddenly quit smoking at the age of 78. I remember one day, my father showed me the "Digest Newspaper" ordered by the family, which was an article about the harmful health of smoking, which introduced the impact of smoking on people's life expectancy. When my father showed it to me, I just glanced at it briefly. I said aloud into my father's ear, "Smoke if you want, smoke less if you don't want." I don't know if it was the impact on my father or if it was a physical reason. Anyway, not long after, my father decisively quit smoking.
My father came to Xiangyang in May 2011 to live with us, and my wife bought my father a cigarette every month, and my father seemed to smoke very quantitatively, one a month. Father did not smoke well, a cigarette is about a hundred yuan. Father was used to saving, he knew the price of cigarettes, and it was expensive to buy him, and he was reluctant to smoke.
My father told me many times about smoking when he was a child. My father's smoking age is very long, about 60 years old, and it can be traced back to the time he began to smoke when he was a child when he was farming in the countryside. At that time, the family was poor, and my father and adults began to smoke dry cigarettes together, hanging cigarette bags around their waists, and later cut inferior tobacco and rolled them up to smoke. It can be seen that my father's addiction to smoking was still quite large.
After my father joined the work, he began to buy cigarettes with regular trademarks, such as big roosters, round balls, swimming, white crane brands and other cigarettes. When my father smoked, he was quiet and persistent, and he also had a sense of rhythm to spit out a stream of white smoke from his mouth, and his father's troubles at that time seemed to disappear with the white smoke like the wind. Listening to my father, there were no rural men at that time who did not smoke, and smoking meant the continuation of incense...
As a child I was insulated from smoke. In the five years since I graduated from junior high school and returned to my hometown to farm, I have not learned to smoke. My friends of the same age in the village had learned to smoke early, and I occasionally choked on a mouthful. At that time, I didn't understand that the smoke was spicy and choking, and it was so expensive, why did people smoke endlessly?
When my father was young, his addiction to smoking was great. So no matter how busy he work, or after tea and dinner, as long as there is free time, my father always lights one, in the smoke, it seems leisurely, a little ethereal, the fireworks flicker, especially dazzling in the dark. At that time, my father's fingers had long been yellowed by smoke. After work, I still don't smoke.
When I came home for the Spring Festival in 1992, I bought my father a Hongtashan brand cigarette, and at that time a pack of cigarettes was 10 yuan, and my monthly salary was only about 200 yuan. Being able to smoke this brand of cigarettes in those days was definitely a status symbol. When I handed my father the cigarette during the Spring Festival that year, my father kept waving his hand, "Too expensive, too expensive." Later, my mother told me that my father had smoked the cigarette for several months. Since then, I have bought my father a few fine cigarettes every Spring Festival to let him enjoy the old man's life.
Figure: From the network, independent of the text
When I was a child, I remember that when my father returned to his hometown to visit his relatives, he often handed cigarettes to the villagers one by one, but he never saw my father give a pack of cigarettes to anyone in a bag. Father is actually still very stingy. When I was a child, I liked to light cigarettes for my father, who had a fuel engine with a flint stone, and when I lit the fire, I just used my thumb to flick it, and a beam of fire jumped out like magic. When I lit a cigarette for my father, he bent his body, tilted his head, protected the flame with one hand, and held the tail of the cigarette in the other hand, and then took a deep breath. I didn't turn off the lighter until the end of the smoke was completely burned. My father seemed to enjoy smoking and was happy to ask me to light a cigarette for him.
My father worked as a road weaver for more than thirty years, did a lifetime of hard, tiring, dirty work, and lived apart for many years, accompanied by the cigarette he carried with him. At that time, my father was lonely, but he also enjoyed it. My father was usually reluctant to eat well, and he wore overalls. But my father's pocket was not far from cigarettes all year round, and a pack of ordinary cigarettes was only a few cents. Those bitter days seem to have been dissolved from my father's cigarettes, and they have also ignited my father's hope for a miserable life again and again.
After his father retired, he began to return to his hometown to farm his life, and when he was tired of farm work, he smoked a cigarette in the field. My father is good at rough work and tiring work, but he is not good at kitchen work, and I have never seen my father cook a good meal for me, but my father has self-knowledge, during his life in Xiangyang, he always has his mother stir-frying vegetables, and his father washes dishes, one mile and one outside, with tacit understanding. Often after the father washed the dishes, a person sat on the sofa silently burning a cigarette, he began to spew clouds and mist, like a big chimney, the smoke billowed, and soon the house was smoky miasma. My wife and I turned a blind eye, but my mother often said a few words to him. In his later years, my father was no longer used to asking me to light a cigarette for him.
I have not counted exactly how many cigarettes my father smoked in his lifetime, but from my father's yellowed right finger, I can see that my father is an "old smoking gun". My father smoked cigarettes for most of his life, my father had no stories in his life, and my father had no accidents in his life. My father suffered from severe hypertension in his later years, but when he felt that smoking was harmful to his health, he resolutely quit smoking. That's what my father, the most admirable, is.
Now that I am separated from my father's yin and yang, I can no longer light a cigarette for my father with my own hands, but silently wish my father happiness and health in that distant heavenly kingdom.
About the Author
Xu Zhiqiang: Member of China Railway Writers Association, China Essay Association, Hubei Photographers Association
Xu Zhiqiang, a native of Wuxue, is currently the secretary of the party branch of the Xiangyang North Railway Station Workshop of the Wuhan Bureau of China Railway, and has published several literary works in publications inside and outside the road such as "People's Railway News", "Wuhan Railway News", "Fei chi", "Chutian Metropolis Daily", "Xiangyang Daily", "Xiangyang Evening News" and so on. Life is endless, art is endless, and thought is endless. In the process of exploration, the real value is not spectacular, but rich and full. No matter which step you climb, the act of indomitable, jealous and good is in itself a comfort to the soul. The grace of dripping water, the spring repays each other. Standing up to the faithful, honest and emotional, sincerity and goodness to the truth, rather than for the jade to break the power and wealth. The road is long and the road is long, and I will seek up and down. I firmly believe that I love photography, love writing, do not regret it, and photograph or write the truth, goodness and beauty around me.
Photography: All provided by Xu Zhiqiang except for dengming's provenance
Editor: Zerun Shengmin