The clock of my father's life was forever fixed at 19:30 on December 14, 2014, at the age of 80. And the watch that accompanied him for nearly 30 years, when it was still doing the final sprint, finally pointed to 24:36 seconds...
After my father's death, I only kept my father's gemstone flower brand watch produced by the Shanghai Watch Factory No. 2. Because of this watch, we witness a kind of blood kinship between our father and son.
Figure: From the network, independent of the text
In the summer of 1985, I had just graduated from junior high school, and after busy "double robbery" in the countryside, I traveled for the first time and came to the "Jingmen Engineering Section" where my father worked alone. One is to visit my father who is working in a foreign country, and the other is to find a job to make a living around my father. After approaching my father, I learned that my father worked at the bottom of the railway, and my honest father did not have the ability to find a decent job for me, and finally let me work in the canteen of the work area, that is, to help the chef who cooked, and the daily salary was 2 yuan a day.
After I just "went to work", my father took me to Jingmen Dongfeng Mall to buy two watches in order to give me a concept of time. At that time, a watch was 80 yuan, and my father's monthly salary was only more than 100 yuan. It can be seen that the father who cut down on food and clothing still made a capital. Unfortunately, after I returned to the countryside, my watch was accidentally lost after not long, while my father's watch was 30 years old.
I don't know how many watches my father took with me in my life, and I regret that I didn't sit down to reminisce about the past when my father was alive. But that jewel flower watch, I am very clear, I still remember it. The outer and back edges of the dial and the bracelet are made of shiny stainless steel, which is evenly looped section by section. The white dial is evenly engraved with twelve slightly thicker and silver time scale markers, of which in the middle of each of the two consecutive scales, there are four slightly thinner scales, and the twelve compartments are evenly divided into five equal parts. The three hands of hours, minutes and seconds, each performing their duties, rotates clockwise at a uniform speed around the fixed central axis, the hour hand is the thickest and shortest, the second hand is the slenderest, the minute hand is in between, and the dial is also set with a circle of small golden yellow edges around the dial. From the overall design, the watch is simple and generous, in line with the father's identity at that time.
Time flies. In the blink of an eye, it has been many years since my father died, but his voice and smile and his jeweled flower watch are in my memory, as if it was just yesterday, as if it were in front of me. Whenever I see a watch treasured in a drawer, my heart will be touched once, as if my father is silently admonishing me to be punctual and trustworthy in doing things.
After I joined the work, I also gave my father two electronic watches, and my father didn't seem to like it. He said: "The electronic watch looks good, and it is accurate when it goes, that is, it is not good to not clockwork at night, and there is no work to do before going to bed."
I couldn't understand my father. Later, it wasn't until I learned to drive that I had an experience. I like to drive a manual car instead of an automatic gear, and my right hand is often doing plus and minus gears as the road conditions change, just as I like to play with a SLR camera instead of a point-and-shoot camera. Now I know my father's affection for this watch, just as I know the "affectionate past" of this watch.
In his life, my father probably did two things, one was to build the railway, and the other was to cultivate the land.
After his father retired, his brother and sister-in-law happened to work in the county town, and the family had 2 acres and 8 points of land, and my father had been a kind for more than ten years. When my father was young, he was a poor peasant, a peasant with a smell of dirt all over his body, who had been working on the railway for more than 30 years and was still doing the work of raising roads as tired as farming. It is such an ordinary and simple father, still carefully cherishing his ordinary and simple watch.
In my heart, my father was honest, industrious and simple. His father worked as a soldier in his youth, and after retiring from the army, he entered the railway as a road maintenance worker. Looking at my father's watch, I have an unspeakable pain, which is the interweaving of suffering and loneliness, a thousand turns, a sigh, like the eastward flow of the river, endless. Maybe it's father and son, I've been carrying my watch ever since I started working.
Figure: From the network, independent of the text
Today, whenever I touch this old watch with its mottled cracks, the slightest chill reminds me of the last time I held my father's unheated palm at the funeral home. That feeling made me instantly understand the distance between life and death. When the hour hand, minute hand, and second hand of life stop, what else can warm the world that is close to the end of the world?
Now whenever I see the watch left by my father, I want to cry and pour out my endless thoughts about my father.
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