Fang Jianjun | mother's small wooden box

Mom's little wooden box

◎ Fang Jianjun

I always couldn't believe that my mother had left, I always thought that my mother was out of the far door, maybe one day she would come back to me, smiled and said to me: "Son, I am back." "But whenever I woke up crying from my dream, I realized that my mother had really gone to heaven and could never come back to see me."

I took a small wooden box with me, as if she had always been with me. This wooden box is the dowry of the bride, it is forty centimeters long, twenty-five centimeters high, and twenty centimeters wide. The purple paint had begun to peel off with the passage of time, and what looked like an ordinary little wooden box had a heavy place in my heart.

The bedrooms in the countryside all have a thing called "over the shed", and since I can remember, the mother's small wooden box has been placed on it, and there is always a small iron lock hanging on it, and in my childhood memory, it is like a magic box, not necessarily when, it will conjure up something. At that time, my father would be a stonemason, and when he helped people repair the house, they would give some small foods, such as salted dried tofu, peanuts and the like, and put them all into a small wooden box, which was always a sweet worry before I went to bed every day.

When I was a child, life was very difficult in our family, and the children basically did not have any snacks to eat. At that time, grandma's family was in a better situation, grandma would often bring us some snacks such as biscuits, and my mother would put them into a small wooden box and take them out from time to time to give our sisters and brothers a few pieces, at that time, my mother was very partial to me, no matter what she divided, she would always give me a little more. When I was a child, my health was not good, whenever the autumn and winter seasons changed seasons, the skin would always itch, scratched some places on the body were bloody, itchy at night and couldn't sleep, thought of a lot of ways to cure it, the mother didn't know where to hear a home remedy, wiping the skin with pickles would remove the roots, so the mother would cut a few pieces of pickles every night to wipe my whole body, at the beginning when the skin irritation was very painful, so I cried and made trouble, my mother would even follow the tears, I was afraid of the mother crying since I was a child, the mother fell into tears, No matter how hard I cried, I would stop immediately. The mother would take a cookie or peach cake from the small wooden box and give it to me, so that when the skin irritation was no longer painful, she would pretend to be in pain, cry loudly, and trick the mother into giving me the biscuit. My sisters and sisters have all been beaten by my mother, and my mother has never beaten me, even if I have run into a big disaster, I can at most reprimand a few words.

I remember a snowy winter, I saw such a big snow for the first time, very excited, after school called my friends to go crazy in the snow, the cotton jacket was wet, the boots were wet and didn't care, crazy to the evening, the temperature was lower, suddenly felt very cold, so I shouted my partner to go home. When I got home, I told my mother that my feet were very painful, and my mother took off my wet cotton shoes, only to see that my feet were already frozen red, and my mother was angry and painful, and she rubbed my feet with her hands, and finally my mother lifted her clothes and put my feet on her stomach, and I only felt a warm current from the bottom of my feet to the bottom of my heart, saying: "My mother's belly is really warm." The mother took out a handful of peanuts from the small wooden box like a magic trick and said, "First eat some cushions on your stomach, drink some hot porridge for a while, and you are not allowed to play in the snow later." ”

I remember the night before I went to boarding high school, my mother took out five dollars from a small wooden box and said to me, "These five dollars are carried on my body, and I take them out to spend when I am in a hurry." "I've never taken that much money, and I didn't know there was money in the little wooden box. The five dollars stayed with me for more than half a year, until I was sick once and spent a dollar in the school infirmary to buy medicine.

Later, life got better and better, the small wooden box has long ceased to padlock, the mother began to use it to pack some insignificant things, once joked: "Mother, this small wooden box is an heirloom, you will pass it on to me in the future." The mother smiled and said, "Okay, if you don't give up, you will keep it after a hundred years." ”

I never dreamed that the mother, who had always been healthy, was suddenly knocked down by cancer, and the mother seemed to know that her time was short, and one day she said to me: "You take that little wooden box, it seems that I can't use it." I said to my mother sadly, "No, mother, you are fine, you will have to live for many years." ”

I accompanied my mother day and night, one night, the sleeping mother suddenly convulsed, there were tears flowing out of the corners of her eyes, I was most afraid of the mother crying, so gently called, the mother's emotions slowly calmed down, but I could no longer sleep, carefully looked at the mother's familiar face that could no longer be familiar, has been engraved in the bones of the more and more emaciated face, remembered when the grandmother died, the mother cried hoarsely, tearing the lungs, I was very afraid, step by step holding the mother staring at the mother's face and powerless, after all, it was her mother-in-law, after all, it was her mother-in-law. And now it's my mother-in-law who is about to leave me.

When my mother was dying, she could not speak, she looked at me, and then looked at the small wooden box on the "shed", I could not control my tears, choked and said: "Mother, I will take good care of this small wooden box." The mother smiled slightly...

The mother left, with my endless regrets, everything in my body seemed to be hollowed out, leaving only this small wooden box, I chose a photo of the mother in the flowers and put it into the small wooden box, I put the small wooden box next to the bed, just like the mother has always been with me...

(The image in this article is provided by the author, if there is any infringement, please inform and delete it.) ）

About the Author

Fang Jianjun, a native of Laizhou, born on August 2, 1968, is a member of the Communist Party of China and graduated from Laizhou Construction Technical School in 1988. He is a member of Yantai Prose Literature Society. He once worked in a township enterprise, worked as a business manager, and then went to the sea as an individual, and is currently a taxi driver. Love life, like literature, travel, photography, running, a marathon enthusiast, has participated in Beijing, Jinan, Wuxi, Xuzhou, Qingdao and other 15 full marathons, running a marathon, understanding a city, hope to learn about the customs and customs of all parts of the country through the marathon in his lifetime, broaden his horizons.

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