Prose | written on Mother's Day without a mother

On Mother's Day last year, I was still a child with a mother. On Tomb Sweeping Day, I took my mother to the grave of my late father, who was three years old. Continuing the Labor Day holiday, I took a public holiday from the poverty-alleviated Pingjiang Wanghu Village to spend Mother's Day with my mother at my second sister's house. This was the last holiday I spent with my mother, on the 24th day of July in the lunar calendar, and my mother left with her father, who had been with me for sixty-seven years. In this year's Qingming, only I was left with my wife and children to return to my hometown to visit my parents' graves. I knelt down in front of my parents' graves, tears blurring my eyes. This is the place where endless love returns, we are outside, the second old is inside!

The old house on the north bank of the Tieshan Reservoir is where I was born and raised, and it was built by the ancestors of the neighboring neighbors in the Qing Dynasty during the Guangxu Dynasty, and has a history of nearly 150 years. After the founding of New China, the neighbors who were assigned a production team to live in, now only less than 20 elderly people are left behind.

When I came back this time, I could no longer see my father waiting for me on the side of the road, I could no longer hear their love nagging, I could no longer taste the meals that my father had prepared for us, and what greeted us was the empty old house and the remains of our parents on the wall. Only The flying swallow in front of the hall, who seemed to recognize the returning relatives, hovered above my head, and the tears blurred my eyes again. Fortunately, the neighbors of the hometown arrived at the sound of dry and peach, warm greetings, and brewed hot tea to dispel my sadness.

"Parents are here, life still has a place to come; parents go, life is only the way home" Half a century of life, "What is hometown, what is hometown?" I really didn't understand it, and now I finally understand it!

The difficult years of the 1960s are still vividly remembered, when our sister and brother were not yet adults and our father was framed and forced to leave public office and return to his hometown to work as a farmer. Because of the large number of people and the small labor force, our family has become a famous "overspending household" on the production team list every year. When his father was seriously ill, one of the "erlangzi" of the production team said that he wanted to put his arms around our cotton wool to "overspend", and it was the mother's sincere apology and the persuasion of the kind neighbors that defused his impulse. The mother's inseparability supported our stormy home and let my father carry the pain of the almost extinguished illness. At that time, during the New Year's Festival, when our family was too poor to open the pot, the kind neighbor sent a scoop of rice and the other brought a bowl of meat. Our family read the good of the neighbors, my father came from learning Chinese medicine, the neighbors never took anything; my father was good at calligraphy, and he always sent his own written Spring League to each neighbor during the New Year's Festival, which is also the return of our family's kindness to the neighbors.

Parents are here, love flows. When I was a child, I never heard them say that they loved you, and even beat you when you were disobedient, but quietly gave you the best, which is the Chinese parent. At that time, Daddy was still alive and supported by my uncle and our family. Even if the eldest sister, second sister, and third sister drop out of school to work as a farmer, our family of seven is in a very difficult situation, and it is common to not have enough to eat. Meals need to be divided by adults. Their principle is: the eldest sister, the second sister, and the third sister must eat a little to have the strength to earn work points, and they must share more; my fourth sister and I are still reading, and if we don't spend effort, we will have less. Despite this, the young me and the fourth sister still widened our eyes to see who was given a larger lump of moldy tofu and who had more rice in the bowl, like a vigilant kangaroo and a black-faced Bao Gong, but forgot that there were only fewer rice grains and boiled salted vegetables in the parents' bowls. At that time, the economic conditions were slightly better, and the moldy tofu could be eaten from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, and the moldy tofu pickled in our family in the first month of the second year was almost eaten. Now some people say that eating too many pickles is not good for the body, but I still maintain the "bad" habit that a dish of moldy tofu and tea can deal with a meal, which should be developed in that year!

Rich or poor, sick or miserable, parents give everything they have to love us, including giving their lives. Even if we start a family, in the eyes of our parents, we are just children. The second elder misses the second sister the most, because her family is in the countryside, and the conditions are relatively poor. Usually, the good things in the house are kept for her. I remember once I bought a "tonic" for my father, and they secretly gave it to my second sister, lying to her that she was not suitable for taking this medicine at this age and body (my father was a Chinese medicine doctor). I said, "I bought it for you, you will eat it yourself, and I will buy another one for the second sister", they were full of promises at the time, afterwards who should remember who or who, often the food is not willing to eat until it is moldy and then eat. The neighbor Tao Jiao often said to us: "If the two old families do not come to visit, they are not willing to spend money to buy meat, and even the eggs in the family are reluctant to eat." Nowadays, the party's policies are getting better and better, and the second sister's family is gradually getting richer, and they no longer need the concerns of their parents. Last year' Mother's Day, I took a photo of my mother, and the background behind me was the home of the second sister now. The last four months of the mother's life were spent happily in their home.

I once read a poem written by Dai Chang, a student at the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, to his late mother, "Feeling that the mother is still by my side": "The water of the waterfall goes up against the current / The seeds of the dandelion float back from afar, gathering into the shape of an umbrella / The sun rises from the west and falls to the east / The bullet returns to the gun / The athlete returns to the starting line / I return the acceptance letter, forget the cold window of ten years / The aroma of the meal wafting in the kitchen / You sign my roll / Turn off the TV, help me put the bag on my back / You are still by my side", the author hopes that time can be turned back, Everything can return to the way my mother was alive, and I don't want to go back to the years when my parents were both complete. Unfortunately, time is cruel, life is short, life itself has a fragile vulnerability, and life often leaves endless regrets!

The saddest thing in the world is probably that our parents did everything to raise us, and we can only look at the back of our parents' old age, gradually drifting away. How sad it is that the tree wants to be quiet and the wind does not stop, and the son wants to raise and not to kiss!

There is no mother this year, but Mother's Day will come as scheduled, so I will write this text to commemorate my "hard-working" mother-in-law, hoping to return to my father's side in my dreams!

【About the Author】

Ye Piao zero, a small employee of the central bank. When he was young, he worked as a food salesman, a money counting clerk, an office clerk, a treasury accountant, a statistical analyst, and then a discipline inspection supervisor; he also worked as a dance hall singer, a radio guest, and in recent years, he has also participated in the performance of financial theme propaganda TV films such as "Because I Met You" and "Three Generations of Payment". More than half a century of life, more than half a century of "members" on the "members" down, in the end nothing has been achieved. Chat and write a few words to pass the lonely time.