Grandpa's fig tree

On August 18, 2023, I went out of town to attend the opening ceremony of my friend's restaurant.

Friends' Restaurant is located in a commercial complex called So-and-so Square.

Now people do business, and people in heaven and earth publicize in all directions. The whole square was crowded, and it was summer vacation, and the friend's restaurant was open from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. when I left, and there were still a large number of diners sitting on stools outside the door.

This is true not only for friends' houses, but also for all the restaurants on the fifth floor of the entire square.

It is said that the economy has not been very good recently, the consumption of large items is weak, and small items are still no problem, after all, the foundation of our peaceful development in the past few decades is still there. I think.

In the evening, stars were also invited to help.

Not only was the inside of the square overcrowded, but the next escalator was terrifying, and even the road outside was blocked by the police. Allowed to go out and not allowed in.

The mobile phone map shows that it takes only ten minutes to walk to the hotel. So I started walking with the flow of people.

The summer evening breeze, although a little hot, is quite pleasant.

When I walked to a bridge, I suddenly smelled a familiar smell that had been hidden in the depths of my memory for a long time, and when I turned my head, I saw several bamboo baskets placed on the side of the road, and the baskets contained a small fruit.

The street lights are dim.

I knew by the smell that it was a fig.

A handsome old man with white hair stood under a street lamp, guarding his baskets.

I walked over and inquired about the price.

He said five dollars a pound.

I said two pounds. This fruit is small, and two catties can weigh dozens of them.

I picked the fruit with my uncle, weighed it, and scanned the code to pay.

When I was about to leave with my horse bag, I bent down and grabbed a few more and stuffed them in.

"We grow our own ones, it doesn't matter if there are more or less." His ravinely smile was very simple.

Carrying the fruit and walking on the streets of a foreign land, I glanced at my uncle's white hair several times, and suddenly a sad arrow hit my heart and quickly spread to all four limbs.

I won't be so superficial as to casually move my mind to sympathize with a strange uncle, maybe people are not having a bad time, but they can't help but want to do something for fun, and I bought two catties is already my mind. Just through this uncle, it seems to see another old man, my grandfather, he was also a thin old man, his eyes were kind and bright, easily not blushing with people, from three to eighty, no one can say that he is not good in the slightest, no matter his own family affairs or other family affairs, as long as he finds him, all do their best, old scalpers like hard work, suffer losses and do not resist, fooled and have no complaints, after his death, the family did funerals, uninvited people who took the initiative to come to mourn, as many as a dozen tables, Once squeezed to their own children and grandchildren, they could only stand outside holding bowls and eating leftovers from the table...

It is said that whether a person is respected in old age or even after death is measured not by the amount of money, but by virtue. Although grandpa has been an ordinary person all his life and has not created any great deeds, he is not a loss in terms of morality.

Grandpa planted a fig behind the house when he was young, I don't know how many years it has grown, anyway, by the time my child can climb the tree, the fig is already seven or eight meters high, the branches and main branches are very thick, it is the tallest and most leafy fig I have ever seen.

I climbed this tree as a child, and later my son climbed it, and my siblings, almost none of them have not climbed this tree.

The deepest impression was that in late spring, when the buds of figs were not as big as nails, my youngest cousin, who was about eleven or twelve years old at the time, led a group of children and climbed up.

My son was very young, just over three years old, and he was red-eyed, but he had not climbed a tree and had no experience.

So, his little brain moved, found a hula hoop, and asked the little uncle and aunt above to help put it on a branch that was sawn in half in winter, and he hung the hula hoop with both hands, his legs pedaled the main trunk, and he dragged himself up with force.

When we found the back of the house, we saw seven or eight children, like big fruits, scattered on the trees, each holding a lollipop.

At that time, my grandfather was still here, he was not a person who talked a lot, and his ability to express himself should also belong to the category of honest and honest people, and he smiled very happily when he saw that the trees were full of happy children.

Accompanying Grandpa to find the child was one of Grandpa's sisters-in-law. By generation and ranking, I should call her "Fifth Grandma". The fifth grandmother, a native of Xinghua, Jiangsu, came to our village to beg for food and was introduced to marry a brother of my grandfather. The body is very thin, but the personality is hotter than chili, very difficult to mess with, the reputation is not very good, once some clansmen said that she has a bad mouth and loves to scold people. I happened to be there, so I helped: "No one is born to like to be enemies of people!" If no one bullies her, what is she doing with good manners? You bully people, and you are not allowed to resist! ”

Every family has a difficult scripture. I didn't mean to favor the fifth grandmother. Instead, based on what I saw and heard, I said a fair word.

This word somehow reached the ears of the fifth grandmother, and every time I took the baby to my grandfather's side, she would look for it, sometimes stuffing the child with small snacks, sometimes stuffing small change.

This time, she stuffed my son with 20 yuan.

This made me very upset, when I gave my grandparents a festival gift, I would always give her a copy by the way, so she loved me and my son even more. In the end, she passed away, I was out of town, because it was inconvenient to drive that night, I spent 1100 yuan to hire a substitute driver, and rushed home overnight. This is the most expensive chauffeur I've ever had.

……

When I was a child, I looked forward to growing up, and when I really grew up, I would find that time passed like a rocket launch, so fast that people always wanted to turn back time.

In June this year, I occasionally saw people planting figs in their yards, short and thin small tree poles, which were photographed and dried like treasures.

I suddenly thought of the giant fig tree in my grandfather's house.

As soon as my thoughts opened, it was difficult to brake, and I carefully counted that most of the children who were full of trees back then now went to college, and half of them also went to 985,211 schools. I don't know if it's a coincidence or a blessing from the tree god.

The children went their separate ways, but the tree was long gone.

Grandpa saw it with his own hands.

I once asked my mother, why do you want to see such a good tree?

My mother said that it had a bad name, figs, did not bloom, only bore fruit, and just aimed at the door of one of my cousins' house, suspected of affecting feng shui.

When you look at it carefully, it seems that there are no apples, and fruit trees such as persimmons and dates have a good meaning.

If it grows in the wild, it is certainly not guilty.

Its sin was that it grew directly opposite the door of my cousin's house.

My cousin's eldest son, the same age as me, was eight or nine years old, taking advantage of the adults' nap, sneaked out to swim, and drowned early.

Later, the aunt gave birth to a son, this child, who grew up to adulthood, tested for a driver's license, and the night he got the book, he drove a few friends to the town to eat roast chicken, drank alcohol, and grabbed his neck to drive, but collided with a muck truck smuggling materials halfway, and disappeared on the spot.

Grandpa's figs were cut up then.

Not the meaning of the cousin's family.

It was grandpa himself who meant it.

A tree that has been planted for decades, has the longest trunk seven or eight meters high, and the diameter of the canopy when the branches are lush is also seven or eight meters.

Grandpa must have put a lot of effort into teasing it.

After so many years of companionship, even if people have different paths, the feelings are very deep.

So huge trees, the possibility of transplantation is very small. After the cousin's family left, many people suspected that there was a problem with the feng shui of the cousin's family, and there was no reason why the two sons could not stay.

By chance, grandpa stood at the main entrance of his cousin's house, and as soon as he looked up, he saw the giant fig he had planted.

Figs, figs, do not flower, only bear fruit.

With the truth of "rushing to the hospital", the cousin lost two sons in a row, and as the highest elder in the clan, grandfather blamed the sadness and regret on a tree.

Compared to flesh and blood affection, it is just a tree.

Although he cut it, his cousin's family could not come back.

Grandpa has been humble all his life, and it is rare for him to hurt anyone, except for this tree.

Walk the streets of a foreign land with a flood of memories.

It's far away, and it's as if everything happened yesterday.

We come here with only time, but time does not give us time at all.