#春曰生活打卡季#
Author: Mr. She
He was the eldest son in the family, as his father often told him. He didn't understand why his father was always talking, but he knew that he was the eldest son in the family.
He has lived here for as long as he can remember, and in addition to his parents, he has a younger brother who is two years younger than him and a younger sister. After counting the items in the house, except for a kang and a set of pots and stoves, only the roof and earthen walls remained. Yes, their family is so poor, so poor that they don't even have a decent door.
He lived in such a home without any waves for more than ten years. He is glad that he is the eldest son in the family, because his parents always leave the best things for him. His mother would give him the last piece of bread in the house, and he would hold his stomach and watch his younger siblings cry with hunger, he always had new clothes to wear, and his younger siblings wore all the clothes he wore in tattered clothes, and he did not stop thinking about his tuition fees during the most difficult times in the family, so his younger brother was two years late for school. Since he was a child, he always had flesh on his face and decent clothes, compared to his younger siblings, whose faces were like hickory, and whose legs and arms were not as thick as bamboo poles, like two little ghosts who were asking for their lives, and his younger brother was only two years younger than him. He enjoyed it all as he deserved, and who made him the firstborn?
That year, he failed the college entrance examination and was only admitted to a junior college, but his parents happily went everywhere to give him a seat. On the day he went to school, the whole family went to the station to see him off in the clothes they wore for the New Year, and his mother brought the gold-plated hairpin that she had married. Sitting in the car, he looked out the window at the group: the faces of his younger siblings had begun to appear, he saw his father's nose on his brother's face, his mother's eyes on his sister's face, he looked at his own face reflected in the window pane, but he found nothing. Whatever, he's the eldest son in the family, and even his parents say so, he thought.
As soon as he graduated from college, his father's body collapsed, and when he hurried back, he was bedridden. That night, his father dismissed the family and called him to his bedside. Father patted the edge of the kang with his calloused hands and motioned for him to sit down. He saw his father's mouth squirming, but he didn't hear what was said, he put his ear to his father's mouth, and it was: "Son, carry me to the east end of the village...... Go meet your father......"
He thought that his father was sick and confused, and he called out to his mother, but he did not expect that his mother said unusually calmly, "Go, child...... It's time......"
The doubts in his heart were heavier, but he still carried his father, and at that moment he "chuckled" in his heart, and his father who stood up to the sky in his memory was as light as paper, and he carried his father on his back and walked steadily towards the east of the village. I'm the eldest son in the family, isn't it, he thought.
The wind of the midsummer night somehow became cold, and the moon faintly sprinkled the bright moonlight on the path where the black general could not see the end, but the dust raised shone brightly, and the sound of "rustling" leaves made the surroundings even more terrifying. The father leaned his head on his shoulder, pressed it close to his ear, and said with a breath, "It's here...... Put me down......"
Growing up in the village, he didn't know that there was a grave here, let alone who was buried here, because his father never let him go east, and he never mentioned it. As soon as his feet touched the ground, he fell to the grave and sobbed, and kept calling out a name unknown to him, he had never seen such a father, and the father before him was as foreign to him as the name in his mouth.
"Father......" he cried tentatively. The father turned over with difficulty, collapsed on the grave and said to him, "Son, this is your real father...... and he froze in place as if he had been hit on the head. Haven't I always been the eldest son in the family all these years, he thought.
That night, my father unreservedly poured out the knot that he had buried in his heart for more than 20 years. It turned out that the owner of that name was his father's best friend, and when they were young, they had agreed to go to the ends of the earth, but later, both of them started a family in this small ravine, the difference is that the friend's family background is already very solid, which makes the father very annoyed, and he feels that the friend has broken the promise at that time.
Soon after, my friend fell ill and couldn't sleep well all night. That night, my father happened to pass by in front of my friend's house, and when he heard that my friend was coughing and couldn't catch his breath, my friend's wife went to another house, because she was jealous, complained, and unwilling, so my father chose to walk away quickly. It's just that unexpectedly, my friend swallowed his breath after he left. After his friend's death, his wife swept away all his possessions, leaving behind his infant child. When the father was packing up his friend's things, he found a suicide note, which explained that all the property belonged to the father after the friend's death, and it was guilt, self-blame, and sympathy, and his father did not recover the friend's property, but took him home. Hearing this, he couldn't even speak, it turned out that he had never been the eldest son in this family, he thought.
As for what his father said later, he couldn't listen to it, looking at this old man who he had called his father for more than 20 years, and could even be regarded as his father's killer, he couldn't even hate him at all. He knew that his father had done everything in his power to atone for his sins—if jealousy was a sin. He leaned down, picked up his father, and whispered, "Father, you are confused. ”
Soon after returning home, my father was not breathing. He buried his father next to his friend's grave and presided over his father's funeral. With all the chores done, he saw his mother packing for him. "Child, I've wronged you all these years, go out and take a look, I don't blame you. Mother said with tears in her eyes.
But he threw his luggage into the corner and said to his mother, "This is my house, where do you let me go?" "He's the eldest son, he's got what he's going to do, he thought.
The admission notice for the graduate school came, but he burned it without telling his mother, and he stayed in this small mountain village. He got a decent job and insisted that his brother go to college, where he knew he couldn't get ahead. The neighbors were all talking, wondering if there was something unpleasant in his house, and he didn't speak. He's always been the eldest son in the family, always has been, he thought.
Years later, he sent his sister out of the mountains, and he stayed here to see his father and friends when he had nothing to do. That's what the firstborn looks like, people say.
About the author: Mr. She, formerly known as Geng Ruihan, a native of Yiyuan, Shandong, a member of the Maoying Literature Society, a member of the Zibo Poetry Association, won the provincial first prize of the 2024 Popular Science Fiction Essay Competition, and his works "The Love of the Old House in the Depths of the Dream" and "On the Road" and so on.