Text/Dou Aiguo
"Whoever says an inch is careless, he will be rewarded with three springs. "Mother's love is like a warm spring breeze blowing on my cheeks, like a trickle nourishing my heart, and more like a gentle river that feeds me to grow. My mother has been away from us for 15 years, and whenever I accompany my wife back to my mother's house, I always miss my mother. Mother is kind, kind, hardworking, and simple. She always does things silently, smiling, and hardworking. She silently gave her most affectionate love to her children and to our family.
One
For as long as I can remember, I remember my mother's long black and translucent braids, flowing and agile. Later, in order to supplement the family, she had to cut off the beautiful long hair and sell it. The mother's face was fair, always with a bright smile, and a pair of clear and bright eyes flashed with a gentle light. Despite her height and medium build, she always walks with the wind. The mother often wore a gray coarse cloth gown and navy blue coarse cloth trousers, and the shoes were dark in color. At that time, my mother's youthful vitality and bright aura filled the surroundings, and in my heart, she was the most beautiful mother in the world!
When I was a child, I was my mother's follower, and I followed my mother wherever she went. At that time, the happiest thing was to follow my mother to my grandmother's house. I often prepare the trolley first, put a rectangular basket made of mulberry strips on both sides, spread a small mattress in the basket, and put my sister and I in the basket, and we need to tilt our heads and wait for my father to lift the handle of the trolley to be comfortable. But sometimes you have to wait for a few minutes, and this time is especially difficult and uncomfortable. Finally, it was not until Dad lifted the handle of the trolley and began to push the cart forward that he was comfortable. I went to my grandmother's house with my mother and had a lunch, which was especially satisfying. Sometimes, I have to eat dinner before I go home. In the night, sitting on the trolley, listening to my father and mother talking about the shortcomings of the family, occasionally passing through the village to see the sometimes flickering lights, and hearing the sound of dogs barking, I did not feel afraid, but felt warm and happy.
Two
Women can hold up half the sky, and that's true in our family. My mother had to do farm work in the fields, cook on fires, and do needlework. When they were in the production team, they had to obey the arrangements of the production team and go to work to earn their share; when they were moving, they had to dig and load the cart (trolley) and pull the cart with their father, and they would transport soil to build a house, and help their father to live the mud, make adobe, and build a house; and after the land contract was carried out and the production was delivered to the household, he would help his father to farm, grow and sell vegetables.
I do a lot of work in the fields, and I am also responsible for cooking. What gave my mother a headache was that when I was a child, my family was in poor conditions, and I was often short of oil, noodles, and salt, so I had to be cheeky to borrow it from a neighbor's house. In autumn and winter, my mother often carried an ear basket around with a bamboo rake, like willow leaves, poplar leaves, and reed leaves. Of course, I also helped with this kind of work.
I remember one summer afternoon, when the weather was extremely hot, my mother and I went to the ditch next to the production road to cut a lot of grass and fill it with a big ear stick. When I got home, I was sweating profusely and was very thirsty, so I couldn't wait to run into the room, picked up the scoop and scooped a scoop of water into the sweet water tank, and wanted to drink water. At this time, my mother hurriedly ran over and dissuaded, saying, "Don't drink cold water when you sweat, you will get sick, there is hot water in the kettle, go and drink some hot water!" Although I was a little reluctant, I still listened to my mother's words. Coincidentally, on this night, the sad news came: a middle-aged man from a neighboring village felt very hot after hoeing grass in the melon orchard at noon, so he took a bucket of water from the well to wash his hair, and he died that night. Now that I think about it, I realize that there are some common senses in life that must be followed, and I can't act arbitrarily.
My mother often used rainy days and evenings to do some needlework, sometimes spinning, sometimes collecting shoe soles, sometimes sewing clothes, and humming small songs when she was happy. I remember one rainy afternoon, my mother was holding the soles of my shoes, I was playing beside me, and my father rushed to the market to sell the pot lids he had nailed. As if I had had had enough of playing with myself, I ran to my mother and pestered her to play with me, but my mother smiled and said, "You are so obedient, your father said to buy you a good thing, called 'puppy and waiting'!" Because I didn't understand the meaning of this sentence at that time, I thought it was a toy, but my father didn't bring any toys when he came back from the market in the evening, and told me that the "puppy" was me. Alas, it made me rejoice all afternoon. This is the real "young ignorance".
Three
After moving from the old house to the new village, vegetables can be grown in the yard in front of the house, and then sold in the market to increase the family's income, and life is gradually getting better. However, I remember one time when my father came back from selling vegetables, he put the rod scale used for weighing vegetables on the basket used for selling vegetables (a large ∩-shaped basket for vegetables on the back seat of a bicycle, which is rare now), and I was afraid that the scale would be stolen outside, so I took the scale to the room and put it on the chimney of the small stove used for stir-frying. But when my mother came home in the evening to cook on the fire, I forgot to tell her, and my mother didn't notice the rod scale on the chimney of the small stove. As a result, when my mother lit the fire and stir-fried, she smoked the scales. Dad was very distressed when he saw the broken scale, lost his temper, and reprimanded his mother. At that time, I was so scared that I didn't dare to admit that I had brought the scales there.
The mother didn't figure out the situation either, so she was reprimanded in vain. Maybe my mother guessed that I put the scales and deliberately took responsibility for me. I also deeply understood that my mother's love for me is great, and I would rather be wronged and take responsibility for myself, rather than let my children be wronged and hurt at all. I still remember one noon, my father and my mother came back from working in the fields, and I don't know what to quarrel about, my mother was very angry, and simply took a few clothes and went out, and my father also let my mother leave as if he was angry. When my grandmother found out, she asked me to follow my mother.
After walking for a while, my mother stopped and told me not to follow her and let me go home. I didn't know what to say at that time, so I didn't speak, but just shed tears. My mother was very distressed when she saw me shed tears. Without saying a word, he took me by the hand and said, "Let's go home!" When I got home, my mother was busy lighting the fire and cooking again. After the meal was cooked, my mother asked me to call my father for dinner. The mother's heart is so soft and kind, silently dedicating her love to this family.
Four
After I went to junior high school in Qingcheng, I lived fifteen miles away from home, lived in the school, and returned to school every weekend with three days of dry food (usually cornmeal nests), and usually until Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, my mother or sister brought me dry food again. Sometimes, when my mother saw other students' parents giving me delicious food, she felt uncomfortable. I went to Qingcheng Commercial Street and bought me three fritters (about half a catty) to satisfy my hunger. My mother didn't have any requirements for my academic Xi, and she didn't care about the class ranking, she just asked me to study hard, and don't waste such a good Xi (the junior high school I studied was Gaoqing No. 3 Middle School, which belonged to the key junior high school of Qingcheng Commune at that time). In order to let me eat good pickles, my mother often deliberately said that there were no vegetables in the pickle jar at home, so I bought a few fragrant and crispy white radishes marinated in soy sauce from the commercial street of Qingcheng Town and brought them home, cut the radishes into shreds, and then fried the radishes with oil and green onions and put them in glass jars, so that I could take them back to school to eat.
I remember that at that time, the family planted cotton and raised pigs, and after fattening the pigs, they had to send them to the Qingcheng market to sell, and the cotton was also picked, collected and packed and sent to the cotton purchasing station of Qingcheng Commune to be sold. Whenever my mother accompanied my father to Qingcheng to sell pigs or cotton, she always bought fried dough sticks and baked cakes and sent them to my school to improve my life. Sometimes it's time to start dinner at noon, and they just watch me finish eating before leaving. And my mother always said that she had already eaten at the market, but I also knew that she was not willing to buy delicious food for herself.
Five
My mother is usually at home, working as hard as my father. Not only crops, but also vegetable gardens. I remember planting fennel, cucumbers, and tomatoes in the spring, kidney beans and eggplants in the summer, and coriander and cabbage in the fall. I also used to help out during the summer and weekends, such as watering, fertilizing, pulling weeds, and ploughing the ground. When the harvest season comes, the vegetables are usually picked every afternoon or evening, placed in a basket, and taken to the market by my father the next morning to sell. My mother's best thing is picking cucumbers and kidney beans, usually the cucumber rack or kidney bean rack that my father and sister have already picked, and my mother can continue to pick many cucumbers and kidney beans from it. This also made my sister and I admire our mother, who is too serious and careful in her work. And Dad was still a little unconvinced, only saying that she had good eyes.
When I was in high school, the living conditions at home became better, and at the same time, the school also stipulated that dry food should not be brought from home, and steamed steamed buns would be steamed in the school canteen, and students could bring wheat from home and exchange it for steamed bun tickets according to a certain proportion. In this way, my mother also did not have to give me steamed dry food, and I also saved the hard work of sending dry food to school. When I went to high school, I was more nervous about my Xi, and I went home less often, about once a month. Every time I go home, I probably bring a bag of wheat and some change back to school. The change was mainly used to buy food tickets and study Xi materials, and my mother was always afraid that I would not have enough money, so she always stuffed me with a few more dollars on the basis of the amount of money she said. Sometimes, in order to sell vegetables at a good price, my father also came to the county to sell vegetables, and my mother always told my father to come and see me and leave me some pocket money.
When I was about to graduate from high school, my father became ill from hard work and got yellow gallbladder hepatitis. My parents hid this secret and didn't tell me for fear of affecting my academic Xi, and I found out about it after I returned home after the college entrance examination. During my father's illness, my mother became the number one inside and out, not only the main laborer of the field work, but also had to take care of my father, grasp the medicine and decoction, and help my father recover his health. During the summer vacation of waiting for the results of the college entrance examination, due to my father's illness, I did my best to help my mother take on some of the manual labor at home. After only a few days of work, my face and skin were tanned, and my shoulders and back were sunburned, and my mother was very distressed, thinking that if only my father had not been sick. That summer was just in time for the dry weather, and I often carried the pumping machine and got the water pipe to water the ground, and I usually did not have such a heavy amount of labor, so my body became thinner, and my mother was even more distressed.
My mother made a local solution, which was to add nutrition to me every morning: take an enamel jar, open two raw eggs and put them in it, stir them well with chopsticks, and then brew them with hot boiling water to form egg drop soup, and let me drink it while it is hot. This trick really worked, and I felt that my body was strong, but it also attracted the envy of my sister. With the careful care of my mother and the good news that I successfully took the college entrance examination, my father's illness basically recovered quickly. When I reported to the university in mid-September, my father sent me to the same school.
Six
After my father's illness recovered, I should say that life was peaceful during the years when I was in college. My younger sister is also older, and she can help her parents do some farm work, and my parents are in a very good mood when I go to college. However, in the second semester of my junior year, my father wrote to me saying that he was sick. When I got the news, I was so sad that I wanted to cry and hurry to get on the train and go home. When I got home, I learned that my dad had hepatitis B. The cause is difficult to say, it may be due to overwork, and it turned out to have yellow gallbladder hepatitis, or it may be that my sister just got married before the Spring Festival, when my parents did not agree with my sister to get married so early, and wanted to delay it for a year, and finally agreed to get my sister married, but my father has not been in a good mood. Before I went home, my father had already been diagnosed at the Affiliated Hospital of Binhai Hospital, so I took the diagnosis certificate and went to Tai'an Central Hospital, where my university is located, to get medicine for my father and let him recover. In the following days, due to my father's illness, my mother became the pillar of the family, busy with everything, taking care of my father and grandparents, not only physically tired, but also mentally tired, which was not easy.
After I graduated from college and got a job, I would go home on weekends and during the autumn wheat harvest to help my mother with some farm work. At that time, the family's cattle did not obey the call, and my mother and I often pulled carts to transport the crops. The most strenuous work is that after the wheat harvest is completed and transported to the yard, a thresher must be hired to thresh, I remember that this work is usually done at night, and my mother, sister, brother-in-law and several of us have to work non-stop for four or five hours, which is very tiring. Because I usually do less physical work and have no stamina, after completing the wheat threshing, I didn't even have the strength to go home, and I just lay down in the yard and slept for half a night.
My mother was also the busiest day when I got engaged and married. In my mother's words, although I am very busy, I am happy. Due to his poor health, his father was responsible for making suggestions, and his mother went to Zhang Luo to do the work. Although my mother was busy, she always had a smile on her face. My mother is also good at listening to other people's opinions, I remember that the night before I got married, the fifth aunt saw that there was no arrangement to make dumplings before the marriage in the sedan chair, so I asked my mother to arrange, and my mother hurriedly arranged this matter, so that I could eat dumplings before getting on the sedan chair.
Before my daughter was born, my mother was busy sewing small mattresses and quilts. After my daughter was born, I was also busy between my small family and my parents' house, taking care of the crops in the fields, taking care of my sick father, and taking care of her little granddaughter.
Eight months after my daughter was born, my father, who had worked hard all his life and did not live a good life for a few days, left this world forever with his attachment and reluctance to this family, and my mother and sister and I were particularly saddened. My mother held back the pain in her heart, and comforted my sister and me, let him go, we did our best, but he himself was not blessed. During my father's illness for five years, my mother poured her greatest strength into being both a father and a mother, coming and going in the wind and rain, silently supporting and working hard for this stormy home. After my dad passed away, my mother devoted all her energy to taking care of my daughter.
Seven
In taking care of her daughter, the mother is very careful. My daughter likes to play outside and doesn't like to stay at home, especially at noon in summer, although the weather is hot, she always lets her grandmother carry her outside to play. The mother is also good-tempered, so she accompanies her granddaughter to play outside, and often can't rest at noon. When her daughter had enough of playing and sleeping, the mother helped her wash her clothes. My mother was very diligent, and she always got up early in the morning without waiting for my wife and me to get up, and when it was almost noon, when she saw something to eat, she would pick and wash it, cut it, and wait for me or my wife to come back and fry it directly. My wife and I often tell my mother that it is very hard to take care of our granddaughter, that we don't have to do these chores, and that we can watch TV in our spare time. Mother always responded, and then silently did what she thought she could do. My wife and I were particularly impressed.
My mother is also very filial, although my father is gone, but every weekend, I take the bus back to my hometown to see my grandparents. Later, my wife and I advised her not to go back once a week, because it was hard to get back and forth. But my mother still insisted on going back once a week, saying that she was worried that her grandparents would be bored at home and looked forward to her going back. Later, my wife and I understood that this was my mother's filial piety for my father. On weekends, I often take my daughter back to see my grandparents. Grandparents are also very fond of their great-granddaughters. Grandma also sewed a small purse out of flower cloth for her daughter. Grandpa always smiled and said to his daughter: "This is the root of our old Dou family!"
Perhaps it is due to the loneliness of the grandparents after the father left, although the two uncles are alive, the two of them are far away in Shaanxi to make a living, the grandmother died two years after the father left, and the grandfather died four years after the father left. Having lost three relatives in just five years, my mother's heart is also relatively heavy. However, my mother still encouraged me to say that even though they are gone, we should live well, and they will bless us in heaven.
My daughter is in elementary school, and our life is getting better day by day. I always feel that my mother's life is not easy, and I have to let my mother live a good life. During the holidays, I always take my mother to Huasheng Shopping Mall to buy a few high-grade new clothes and shoes, so that my mother can also enjoy a new life. often stuffed pocket money into her mother's hand, so that she and her aunt could buy something she liked when she went shopping. Taking advantage of the National Day and May Day holidays, I took my mother to travel to Tai'an, Jinan, Beijing and other places successively, so that my mother could see the outside world.
In Tai'an, we climbed Mount Tai, first walked from the Red Gate to Zhongtianmen at night, and found a small hotel in Zhongtianmen, so that the mother and child could rest for half the night. The next morning, take the cableway from Zhongtianmen to Nantianmen and climb to the top of the Jade Emperor. In Jinan, we went to Jinan Zoo, Baotu Spring Park, and Wanshan Park. In Beijing, I successively went to the Temple of Heaven Park, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, Prince Gong's Mansion, the Ming Tombs, the Badaling Great Wall, the Summer Palace and other scenic spots. Being able to take my mother out to see the outside world and appreciate the beautiful rivers and mountains of the motherland can be regarded as my filial piety as a son.
Eight
On a crisp autumn day, on my way to a meeting in Zhangdian, I received a phone call saying that my mother was sick and my brain went blank. After calming down, he quickly contacted an acquaintance to contact the hospital, and the next day he was diagnosed with esophageal disease at Binzhou People's Hospital. After returning home, I contacted an acquaintance to contact the hospital, and took my mother and brother-in-law to Tianjin Cancer Hospital for diagnosis and treatment, and after expert diagnosis, the condition was basically the same as that of Binzhou Hospital. We followed the doctor's advice and went to the radiotherapy center to go through the procedures for hospitalization.
On the afternoon of the day I completed the hospitalization procedures, my brother-in-law and I discussed going to Beijing 301 Hospital to get a diagnosis. So I rushed to Tianjin Railway Station with my mother, and when I saw that the train to Beijing had to wait for two hours, I was so anxious that I decided to take a taxi to Beijing. So I rented a taxi and took my mother to Beijing. After arriving in Beijing, I transferred to the subway and found 301 Hospital. In the evening of the same day, I queued up for registration, and successfully went to the outpatient clinic the next morning, and the diagnosis result was basically the same as that of Tianjin Hospital: it was not suitable for surgery, and radiotherapy was recommended.
Later, he took his mother back to Tianjin Cancer Hospital by train for radiotherapy treatment. Later, chemotherapy was given in the esophageal department of the same hospital. After the Spring Festival, at the strong insistence of his mother, he underwent chemotherapy treatment in the Affiliated Hospital of Binzhou Medical College. Later, he was rehabilitated at the County People's Hospital. Although my wife and I have a high degree of agreement on the matter of my mother's treatment: as long as we can cure the disease, we are not afraid to spend money. But in the end, due to the ineffectiveness of the cure, the mother left us forever. My wife and daughter and I are particularly saddened.
Although my mother has been away from us for many years, her voice and smile are still imprinted in my heart. Mother has maintained this family with her hard work, supported this family with her responsibility, cared for this family with her kindness, and warmed this home with her enthusiasm. I can't forget her dedication to this family, her nurturing and teaching to me, her care and consideration for his wife, and her care for her granddaughter......
I am so proud and proud to have such a mother!
Mother, I miss you so much!
About author:Dou Aiguo, pen name: Dou Xinzhong, member of Shandong Prose Literature Association, member of Zibo Writers Association, member of Boshan Writers Association. Bachelor degree, optimistic and sincere, love life, like reading and writing, willing to record the bits and pieces of life with words. His works have been published in the literary magazine "Qifeng", "Capital Literature", "Hebei Literature and Art Research Association", "Dream Back to Xiangguan", "Boshan District Writers' Association Wenyuan", "Qilu One Point", "Today's Headlines" and other publications and media platforms.
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