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Missing my mother
Wen Shu
In May, the greenery is full of harvests, silkworms are rustling and eating mulberry leaves, and uncles and aunts are busy in the fields. Once upon a time, my mother was busy like this.
The mother is there, the home is there, not false at all. Whenever I bring my lover and daughter home on holidays, my mother will personally go to the stove to fry a large, golden, oil-stained back pot meat for us, and she knows that we like "that bite" the most. When I taste the taste of my mother, people's sad feelings rise sharply, and their tearful eyes are shaky... It has been many years since my mother left us, and several old houses in the rural hometown are still wearing fir trees, and a few large cypress trees, pear trees, mills, and wind buckets are also there, but they have not been inhabited for a long time, and they are much more desolate and dilapidated.
My mother was born into a sharecropper family in the early 1950s, the oldest of five children. Perhaps it is the rural custom to pity the last baby, and grandpa gave him a nickname of Jinyu. When I was a child, under the oil lamp, my mother, who did needlework, told me many stories about her childhood: Our family was from a helper background, it was too poor, my grandfather died when I was a few years old, and the young grandmother took up the burden of "there are old and young" prematurely, there was no money, she could not afford to go to school, in order to live, at the age of seven or eight, she began to get up early and follow my grandmother to the Jianxing Field more than twenty miles away to catch the market, secretly set up a cold powder stall to sell, and earn a little money to make a living." Whenever I talk about the heartache of suffering, hunger and discrimination, teardrops swirl in my mother's eyes, and when I see that I am also infected with sadness, my mother immediately put away her unforgettable past, did not go deeper, shrugged her shoulders, touched my head, and forced a bitter smile to comfort me: "Son, it has all passed, it is much better now, aren't we living well now?" "When I was a child, I was also very sensible, and immediately stubble another topic with my mother, no longer breaking the casserole to ask the mother's past story." I know that the years, the family, the situation... It is always the pain of my mother's life, and I don't want to puncture the scars left by my mother's cruel years.
Maybe God took special care of my mother, so that she married into our family at the age of nineteen, which was not much better than her mother's family, and it was another "poor" word. Poor life is accustomed, there is nothing difficult or terrible, but my mother is very optimistic and open-minded about life, and together with the villagers, up and down the mountain, in the fields, in the house and outside the house to do large collective farm work, until I reached the school age and could not pay 1.5 yuan tuition, completely changed her mind. She said to her father: "You can't just go poor all your life, you can't be like yourself, because you don't have money to pay tuition, and your son can't even go to school." She secretly consulted with several villagers and embarked on the road of selling piglets to earn money to support her family.
On the eve of the reform and opening up, in that era, it was a "disgraceful" thing to be a pig trader, especially a woman, which was simply "not observing the way of women". The village party secretary and the captain of the brigade talked to her many times, and the most intolerable thing for them was that not only did the mother herself do disgraceful things, but also led a group of big masters in the team to come out to engage in trafficking, and no one did the collective work, which not only affected people's hearts, but also hurt the customs and customs, which was pure rebellion. Because of this, my father really couldn't bear it, and he started to retreat, quarreling with his mother from time to time, and almost divorcing when he was fierce.
Mother is "sharp", in the face of the pointing points behind the villagers, hard not to bow their heads, do not compromise, and my father with an old guy to continue to do their own thing, starry night, sleeping on the mountain, under the eaves, on the street, a few people early in the morning to walk to the market where there are piglets trading dozens of kilometers away from home, and there are several towns around the town where someone says that there is a thin shavings on the pig farm, short women are particularly strong, will do business, that must be talking about my mother.
I don't know if it is because my mother has been mixing with my grandmother in the market since I was a child, or if I was born to be the material for doing business, all the piglets she is in, if she sells them, she will sell them for a good price, and each guy can get a few yuan in a sale. In those days, a few dollars was not a small amount. Perhaps it was the reason why her mother wanted to risk a lot of trouble, and a few big masters in the village circled around her and never gave up the pig business. Mother also has a strange phenomenon, that is, she has not been to school for a day, flat pick a large "1" word do not know, the size of the renminbi denomination is distinguished by color, but she is rarely sensitive to numbers, how much to buy and sell, she will not use addition and subtraction to calculate, did not miss, can be accurate to the "corner" of the "yuan angle point". Curious, I asked her, "How do you calculate the account, so accurately?" Is it mental arithmetic? She was always smiling and speechless, and she didn't know.
In the 1978 reform and opening up, mothers and buddies could do business with great fanfare, no longer sneaky. Every day, in addition to rushing to the farm, when I return home, I rush to do farm work until late at night, and when the chickens crow in the middle of the night, I have to get up to cook, feed the chickens, feed the ducks, feed the pigs... Sometimes I was awakened in my sleep, and in the light of the throbbing flames in the stove hall, I saw my mother's thin figure swaying back and forth, busy with housework. In order to catch up early, that rush look, inside the house, outside the house like a small run, even eating is three planing and two swallows, accidentally sweet potato choking in the throat is difficult to swallow the painful situation, really painful.
In order to save money, it is common for mothers and guys to buy a steamed bun for lunch on the field, and the mother is a fierce "horn", and some people actually use the mother's "eat a bite of sweet potatoes and drink five mouthfuls of soup" as a talk after the tea meal. My mother abused herself so harshly for the sake of this family, and whenever I think of this, I can't help but feel sad. For this family, my mother was busy, hardworking, and running, but judging from the way she worked well and the smile on her face from time to time, my mother was very happy at that time, which also made me feel extremely pleased.
In the second year of the "big bag of dry" households under the land, my family's grain warehouses, grain cabinets, livestock and poultry were full of circles, and the grain was so abundant that it crushed my family's bamboo shell building and smashed three piglets to death. Although it was very thrilling, the joy of the harvest was sweet in my mother's heart, and my family said goodbye to the days of sorrow and clothing. Coupled with my mother's early business, my family became prosperous and became a wealthy family in the village at that time. From time to time, her mother received some needy households and widows and elderly people in the village, and helped them with some food and clothing during the New Year's Festival; sometimes her old companions accidentally bought back the plague piglets in the market and sold them to others, and the mother also wanted to return the sick piglets at a loss, and returned the money to the buyers so that they would not be financially damaged. Her mother did not know a single character, did not know the principle of dealing with people, and she always told her fellows again and again: "We must do a reputable conscience business, and do not do things that harm nature and harm others and benefit ourselves."
Her mother was simple and kind to people, handled things, and received things, and slowly changed the "strange" and "different" people in the village to her. Sometimes in order to be able to buy piglets with long prosperity, those "old researchers" who originally hated their mothers the most as pig dealers had to blush and accompany "no" to ask their mothers to be staff officers and checkers for them to buy good pigs.
Of all the things that fascinated my mother the most, it was none other than my studies. However, my mother never asked me whether my academic performance was good or bad, never nagged in front of me all day to study hard, the title of the gold list, the glory of the ancestors and so on, but only used the greatest guarantee to meet my academic needs, so that I no longer worry about tuition, no longer worry about wearing, no longer worry about living expenses, no longer worry about car fares... Extraally, as long as it was a little related to reading and learning, my mother did her best to satisfy me. At home and at school, I had no other serious work to do except to study and study, so that before I went to school in Chengdu, I had never done farm work in the countryside, and I had never even washed my clothes several times. Even in the busiest season of the school amplified busy holidays and the "Red May" rural season, my mother did not let me participate. There were complaints and protests from family members, and my mother always used "learning takes time" as a shield to help me round the field.
I remember that year the college entrance examination failed, painful, frustrated, wandering, the sky was so gray, the future was so bleak, it has been trapping me, can not help themselves. My mother did not complain a word, and her words were almost cold, but my mother's loving eyes were always comforting my wounded heart and moving me.
One day, my mother invited me to go to the market, but I was so sad and bored that I went with my mother. My mother treated me with the highest specifications on the field, got off the best restaurant on the field, ate the most expensive meal in the restaurant, went to the store to buy my favorite suit and leather shoes that were the most popular at that time, and my mother interpreted her good intentions with such a quiet, simply "doting" reader's way: where to climb down, stand up and encourage, spur me, ignite my passion for struggle, do not give up lightly, urge me to go firmly...
In the early 1990s, in the years when I "peeled off the skin" and walked out of the ravine, I did not disappoint my mother, went to college, and became a township cadre. Because my mother was the only "iron rice bowl" in the whole big family, it was as if she had put gold on her face, so that she could speak "hard words" after the people who had been in front of her, and occasionally she could see her mother's long-lost smile.
Under the meticulous care and shade of my mother, I had a wonderful time in school. I am grateful to my mother for giving me strength and "youthful" rules of conduct. In the days without a mother, everything that did not come was always as expected; what was not experienced was never missed. My mother never gave in and never gave up, which made me learn to grow and let me know how to be a husband, a father, a person, and a society.
Busy working in the field, the time to go back to the hometown is getting less and less, occasionally see the mother's side, see her a lot older, the body is more skinny, the child is a lot shorter, more white hair, every time I go home there is still that fragrant back to the pot meat.... Just the mother nagged a lot: "Baby! When cadres are concerned about the common people, they must help those poor families who really can't afford to eat, can't get dressed, can't live in a house, can't afford to be sick, and can't afford to go to school, and be a good cadre, don't stretch out their hands..." Every time you go home, it is a big washing, a big touch, and a warning education lesson.
Before leaving, my mother always reluctantly accompanied me to the mouth of the village, how far I walked, and looked back to see my mother's thin figure still standing at the mouth of the village, waving to me constantly under the afterglow of the sunset, and the indisputable tears could not help but blur my eyes.
It's another year of "Red May", the old house in my hometown is still there, the pear tree in front of the door is swaying in the wind, like the words of the elderly mother's "nagging" echoing in the ears from time to time...
Written on Mother's Day, May 8, 2022
About the Author
Liu Chuan, a native of Southern County, Sichuan Province, university culture, member of the Communist Party of China, pen name WenShu, director of the Cultural History and Study Committee of the Southern County of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, member of the Nanchong Writers Association, member of the Huaxia Short Literature Society, and member of the Southern County Poetry Association. His poems and essays have been published in publications such as Sichuan Humanities, Lingyun Poetry Garden, poetry Lang Cangnan and many online platforms.
Source: Sichuan Provincial Local History Work Office
Author: Liu Chuan
Pictured: Fang Zhi Sichuan
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