Wherever my mother is, home is there. Wanzhuang, Dingzhuang Village Committee, Dafengying Town, Sheqi County, is where I was born and raised. There is my poor but warm home, and there is my mother who loves me and has been missing, caring and grateful for me for more than 60 years.
Mother is an ordinary rural woman, less than 1.55 meters tall, weighing less than 100 catties, only a year and a half of school, and the farthest place in her life is Nanyang Yueji Garden and Sheqi's wine town.
The mother's maiden home is from Houzhuang, which is only one kilometer away from Wanzhuang. On December 29, 1942, Hou Men was happy to have a daughter, and he also brought happiness and joy to his family. In the age of hunger, it was destined that the mother's childhood memory was sour due to lack of food and clothing. Fortunately, my mother caught up with the establishment of New China, turned over and was liberated, and it felt good to be the master of the house.
My mother also got her wish and walked into the school with her schoolbag on her back. It is a pity that my grandfather bought more than a dozen acres of thin fields with all his savings from selling ginger when the land was cheapest, and he naturally became a rich peasant during the land reform. This hat did not make the mother's family suffer, in the era of ingredientism, the hierarchy of people is absurd and lamentable!
Her mother is the eldest daughter, and there are three younger brothers below, and her grandparents, who have a serious patriarchal mentality, only let her mother go to school for a year and a half, and then let her drop out of school. "Nier's family, who knows the men's and women's toilets, can write their names, and can calculate how much salt they have, and pay more for tuition. "My mother cried and made trouble, but her arms couldn't twist her thighs, and finally she had to watch others go to study in Dinghuo Temple (Dingzhuang Primary School), and she died of her heart to study and broke off the idea of going to school. He only went to the ground to play the shoe, learned to accept the soles of his shoes at home, and helped his grandmother wash the dishes and cook the pot......
When you are a teenager, your mother who is small and weak can do all the work, especially the high composition, and you can't shirk what you are sent to do. Mother once went to the mud river to dig a weir pond, in the middle of winter heavy snow, the cold wind was sharp, my mother was a slogan propagandist, everyone pulled their cotton pants high, only a single layer of clothing, for the general battle, to meet the review of the superior leaders. Since then, my mother has suffered from a cold back and leg pain in winter.
Mother has also washed the sand in the white river beach, panning for gold, the early spring river water, ducks do not feel warm, people soaked in the water for a long time, cold from the soles of the feet straight to the back beam, even shivering, but do not dare to speak. What do you dare to do, what can you do?
The years are not thin for anyone, and the days of lack of food and clothing have not hindered my mother's growth. As the saying goes, "The eighteen changes of the female college, and the more she changes, the better she looks." "Wanzhuang's own aunt Wang Dianxiu married to Houzhuang, and personally escorted the media to match the marriage of her parents.
At that time, my father's family was very poor, my grandfather had worked long hours for the landlord in Guolou, and only returned to Wanzhuang when he was liberated, my grandmother was sick in bed, and she had been paralyzed for several years, and there was an aunt at home.
Some people say that marriage is a woman's second reincarnation. He also said, "Men are afraid of the wrong line, and women are afraid of marrying the wrong man." Although the mother's marriage is "the order of the parents, the words of the matchmaker", the father has cared for the mother all his life and regards it as a treasure in the palm of his hand.
It is not easy for a poor family to marry a daughter-in-law, although there are conflicts between the mother and her in-laws, and there are frictions with the sister-in-law, but the father still protects the mother most of the time. Mother is properly the "head of the house". Able to speak, capable, and able to do things.
In 1961, when the osmanthus was fragrant, the petite and delicate mother married into the Wanzhuang Wang family at the age of nineteen, and was destined to work hard for a lifetime. From '63 to '79, six children were born to our brothers and sisters, five girls and one boy, which made the situation even worse for this impoverished family.
As the saying goes, "it is difficult to be a poor family", or "poor couples mourn everything". First of all, there is no food. Suffering is an asset. My mother always calculated to dry some dried vegetable leaves, cut some dried sweet potatoes, dried radish, dried pumpkin, dried eggplant...... The only limited amount of grain, counting the old grain one by one, as if connecting the old grain to the new grain, and the bitter life of soaking the yellow lotus also has some poetry and warmth.
The most memorable thing is that the mother washes the spring acacia flowers, washes them and steams them in a steamed bun pot, and then spreads them out on the mat to dry, and hangs them on the wall of the house in a coarse cloth bag, and waits until the winter when the snow is falling and the wind is roaring, there is no work in the field, and the work at home is almost done, the mother will soak the dried acacia flowers in water, and then soak some sweet potato vermicelli, add some green onion and ginger to enhance the flavor, and sometimes you can be lucky enough to mix it with some oil zila, and use sweet potato noodles to wrap grain noodles and then add some white noodles to steam into steamed buns, which is simply supreme delicious, enough to taste for a long time, until it is replaced by the memory of the next delicious time。
At that time, my hometown planted a lot of cotton, which was called a cash crop along with sesame seeds, and the price was relatively high. We are not very reluctant to eat sesame oil, usually when mixing lettuce or making noodles, my mother will always dip it with chopsticks, and then drop a few drops on the dish, which will make us smell so much that our noses are sparse, for fear that the fragrance will be wasted. This often makes me feel bitter that "those who are full of gongs and silkworms are not silkworm farmers".
That cotton is really a "treasure" all over the body! Flower firewood is hard firewood, resistant to burning, and fire-strong, and is always willing to use it when steaming buns or improving life. Not to mention cotton, our shoes and socks and the clothes and shirts, needlework and thread are inseparable from cotton.
But the good cotton wool needs to be handed over to the state, and the rest of the stiff petals, short fluff, and yellow color are distributed to each family. But after all, the number is limited, I remember when I was a child, my mother led us to pick up pig-chewed flowers in the flower field. Then dry, tear and pat with your hands, and then play the bullet, this is really a good floc, the pig will also pick, but pick the tidbits of good quality to chew.
At that time, the poor pigs were also hungry, and they could not eat feed and clenbuterol, and the wheat bran at home was sprinkled in the washing water, and it was good to mix it with water. When they were so hungry, they either broke free from the rope or arched open the door of the wooden stick, and some even jumped out of the low fence to hunt in the field to eat. The green wheat seedlings in spring are their favorite, and they hum while eating, and they are in a good mood to fly.
They are not picky, in the autumn they will go to the sweet potato field to arch the sweet potato, that guy is crunchy, sweet, chew a bag of water, eat it with a mouthful of mouth, extremely comfortable. The greater temptation is to eat flowers, the white cloud-like tidbits are particularly eye-catching on the cotton branches, the hungry and thin "long white stripe" pig "Harton" takes a bite, a white cloud enters the stomach, chew hard, the taste of fragrant flower seed oil is forced out raw, it is really fragrant.
Then they are like people eating sugar cane, spitting out the residue, and the dregs are "pigs chewing flowers", and when I was a child, my mother relied on this to subsidize the family, and changed tricks to make us clothed
After my mother died, my sisters went upstairs to pack up my mother's clothes, several old-fashioned old wooden boxes, all of them were quilts, new, old, thick, thin, you can imagine my mother's hobbies and post-existence, and half a pure pig chewing flower woven cloth, earthy yellow, a little rough, very green, at least forty or fifty years old! It was the mother who spun thread at night, even on rainy days, and weaved it with a shuttle.
It bothered her mother's eyes and tired her back. These fabrics are a gift of love and warmth to her family, and they are the most precious legacy she has left us. Our siblings didn't have much ability, and we couldn't be her pride. But we can all support ourselves, and we have always been a treasure in the palm of our mother's hand. In fact, our mother is our life's role model, and we are proud to have such a hard-working mother!
I miss my mother's sweet potato wrapped in a firewood iron pot and grits, it tastes so fragrant. I often remember my mother sitting at the door of the stove house, waving a knife to peel sweet potatoes, we all rushed to boil the pot, the fire was so warm, the rice was so delicious, it was my mother's love lunch.
Mother loves cleanliness. After my father's death, the work of cleaning the yard became my mother's patent. The bulky broom made the mother unaccustomed, she used a broom seedling, a simple bundle, the world's most economical and practical broom to accompany the mother for many years, when you go back to the courtyard is clean.
Whenever we had eaten, my mother would not let us wash the dishes, she would add some water, add a handful of firewood to the stove, and use the pot water to feed the pigs and sheep, which was not bad at all. My mother was scared of hunger when she was young, so she cherished food all her life and did not allow us to waste it. This habit is already engraved in the bones.
Nowadays, in the simple courtyard of Wanzhuang, the old locust tree has sprouted and bloomed, and the little swallows have flown back to find the old nest. But my old mother will never answer my call again...... When I opened my eyes, all I saw was my mother's dear remaining, my mother was still in my dream with my eyes closed, my mother didn't go far, she was just tired, and her new home by the carp ditch was she suing her father for a divorce talk?
Friends, I would like to say that please cherish every minute you spend with your loved ones! Don't let the remorse of "wanting to raise your son but not waiting for your relatives" torment us again!
The happiness of old age lies in the fact that there are people who respond to the children, and there are mothers who hurt. I am over 60 years old, and I have gone through the ups and downs of life, and I look back at the people closest to me who gave birth to me and me.
Now that my mother is 82 years old and has died of illness, I have broken my liver and intestines! Maybe it is because my filial piety is not enough, we only have the fate of mother and daughter for 61 years. How much I longed to be able to watch the sunset with my mother in a wheelchair, holding her hand and leaning over her ear, and whispering to her, "Mother, I love you!"
My mother has passed away, my thoughts have become the sea, and my love has become a death, and since then Wanzhuang has become my hometown!
About the Author
Wang Chunlan, a native of Wanzhuang, Dingzhuang Village, Dafengying Town, Sheqi County, is a retired teacher. I like to read, love life, occasionally feel it, and record life with words!