Love in cloth shoes and letters
I especially love the autumn twilight.
The slanting sun lazily leaned against the golden ginkgo tree, there was a breeze blowing through the treetops, and the fine and dense golden trees in the halo jumped happily, like the dazzling stars in the dark night sky, flashing with dazzling brilliance to embrace me gently.
It's light, it's rainbow-colored warmth, there's the sweet aroma of watermelon and mint, and there's the taste of mom and dad's happiness.
I like to wear cloth shoes made by my mother.
On the peach-colored upper, a butterfly with fluttering wings embroidered with light gold silk thread jumps gently on the forest path covered with ginkgo biloba, and for a moment it seems that I have become a butterfly in the forest, and I smile happily in time. "Grandma is good. "Hello third grandfather. ”......
I ran in the autumn dusk, my pockets stuffed with the ginkgo biloba leaves I had picked up, and as I ran, I vaguely greeted the elders I met on the road, and rushed home to meet the smoke before the sun set.
I have many pairs of cloth shoes: red, green, blue, black, black and white checkered, red and white checkered...... From the mille-feuille soles of the hemp rope at the beginning, to the rubber soles when I went to school, each pair of shoes is embroidered with beautiful colors: there are butterflies, grapes, green leaves, and budding flower bones...... Each pair is made by my mother in the leisure time, and each pair is soaked with love.
Mom likes to hum little songs while making shoes, sometimes it is a classic lyric in the drama, sometimes it is a popular song of the moment. In the sound of her own accompaniment, my mother's hands flew up and down flexibly, and her feet involuntarily beat the beat, and it didn't take much time for a pair of beautiful uppers or a pair of neat mille-feuille soles to be successfully made.
I once asked my mother, "Mom, are you not afraid of making bad shoes when you sing when you make shoes?" ”
"Practice makes perfect" is one of the very useful teachings my mother taught me. As a liberal arts student, the first hurdle I faced when doing my homework was memorization. Unfortunately, I am not a very smart kind of child, and I don't have the ability to memorize, so I often worry about the memorization session in class the next day.
In this case, "practice makes perfect" has become a great tool for me to grow up. I can't memorize it twice, I can't memorize it twice, I can't do it three times, and if I can't memorize it orally, I copy it by hand. Relying on this stupid method, I passed all the way, not only defeated my own memorization task, not to mention, I actually broke into a university from a small town as a problem-solver, and I was able to gain a foothold in a strange city after graduation, I have to say "Mom Cheng doesn't deceive me!"
Unlike Mom, who expressed her affection, Dad liked to write letters and deliver books. If it is placed today, the father of the post-70s generation is estimated to be the image of a young scholar who is polite and eloquent.
When I was in high school, I was a competitor to many of my classmates. For a while, I was making rapid progress, which caught the attention of my tablemate, Ren Glasses. He seriously suspected that I had my own study secrets in addition to the supplementary books issued by the school. So, one afternoon, he took advantage of my time out to sneak through my schoolbag in search of so-called study secrets. It's just that I didn't find the study cheats, but I found a thick pile of letters.
"Oh my God, love letters!" amid the exaggerated call of "Ren Glasses", a bunch of people gathered around my desk. "Ren Glasses" coughed lightly twice in the tone of the Chinese teacher, shook off the letter and began to read the letter: "Dear daughter......" "Ren Glasses" just read a sentence and found that it was wrong, stopped the sound and flipped it again and again, only to realize that it was a letter written by a father to his daughter.
I didn't know anything about the rest of the story, but when I came back, the "Ren glasses" who had always been arrogant took the initiative to apologize to me. And sighed: "No wonder your academic performance is better than mine, you have such a good father." My dad didn't write a word to me. There was a lot of bitterness in the words. I was very angry that day, but seeing that "Ren Glasses" sincerely apologized to me, and looked pitiful, I generously forgave "Ren Glasses" for his offensive.
Dad works outside all the year round and comes home once a year or two. But every holiday and my birthday, my father's gifts and letters always came as scheduled, from my elementary school to college. If there is anyone who gave me the ultimate romance on the road of my growth and planted romantic genes in my bones, it is my father.
The gifts that my father sent me were always wrapped in three layers inside and three layers outside, just like the thousand-layer bottom that my mother densely packed under the light, and the careful but dense and full love flowed quietly along the axis of time and spread into the depths of the pages.
I like to smell the strong smell of ink on new books, and my father's gifts are always indispensable for new books and thick letters. As soon as I opened the package, I would bury my face deep in the ink-scented pages, sniff a few deep breaths, and in a trance I could smell deep thoughts, the smell of sea and salt.
When the sail of emotions was about to fly, I raised my head from the page, opened my father's letter with reddish eyes, and captured my father's daily life and profound teachings to me between the lines.
As I grew up, I rarely wore my mother's cloth shoes, and my father's long voice on WeChat replaced his handwritten letters. In a distant foreign land, no matter how delicate the shoes I bought on my feet, there was still no pair of shoes that could replace the cloth shoes made by my mother.
In the cloth shoes made by my mother, there is a long-lost taste of hometown wind, the smell of trees, the smell of sunshine, and the taste of mother's love, which is the happy childhood and youth that I can't go back to.
Dad's voice is very kind, but I love Dad's letter even more, in Dad's paintings, not only outline firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea, but also describe the poems and distant places affectionately.
These letters, after the precipitation and fermentation of time, are like the old wine stored in the cave, which not only has a long aftertaste, but also inspires me to move steadily and far on the road of life in the future. This, relying only on voice, is too thin.
"The old days were slowing down, and the cars, horses, and mail were slow. "I also wish that time would be slower now and that my parents would stay with me a little longer.
Before the bell rings for the New Year in 2024, I have a most modest wish: to wear cloth shoes made by my mother, take a walk in the woods of my childhood, find a soft grass to lie down, and read the letter slowly.
It's going to happen, right?
• END •
Content from:
Dufur 2023 Essay Competition
Shortlisted Articles
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