Contributor: Anonymous Fu Lu (Disclaimer: This article is not my own experience, it is the real experience of the contributor)
My name is Zhou Hao, I am 60 years old this year, and it is not difficult to see from my background that I am the hope of the whole family.
I am the youngest child in the family, I have three older sisters, and my mother's fourth child gave birth to me and welcomed their son, so since I was a child, I have been cared for and grown up under the doting of my three sisters and parents.
The family doesn't talk about patriarchy, it's actually my education that is more important, and sometimes I feel that I am quite happy because I am loved by so many people.
But sometimes I am very distressed, because I am the youngest in the family, so I am also the lowest status in the family, and I have no say in anything.
The eldest sister had already dropped out of school to work and began to subsidize the family, and the second and third sisters also stopped going to school after graduating from junior high school.
The whole family began to work me, and all the hopes were on me, but fortunately, I lived up to expectations and was successfully admitted to university.
When we got older, everyone started to have their own businesses, and they were all over the world, and every meeting was in their mother's old home.
But this house, which carries these memories and our childhood, was sold by me for 4,000 yuan!
01
As the eldest daughter of the family, the eldest sister began to share the pressure for the family early, and now the eldest sister has her own business in Guangzhou, and she comes back very few times every year, because the business is very busy, and sometimes it is not closed for the New Year.
The second sister and the third sister worked together in Shenzhen, and every time they couldn't do it and had no money, they would go to the eldest sister to tide over the difficulties, and then the two went out together again to find opportunities.
I have to admit that my three sisters are much stronger than me, my life doesn't seem to have any waves, calm and calm, the biggest problem I encountered since I was a child may be lying when I was a child and being taught by my three sisters.
At other times, I never encountered anything else that I couldn't overcome, and my work was very smooth, and the four of us brothers and sisters began to go to our respective lives.
My mother's biggest extravagance at that time may be to hold her grandson as soon as possible, and we should go back to see it more often, and I will go back more often throughout the year.
The second is the eldest sister, who has a successful career, the second sister and the third sister, who are still working hard, and the mother lives alone in her hometown, and what she has to do every day is to grow vegetables and flowers in the yard.
Later, the eldest sister got married, and she married in Guangzhou, and the eldest sister's husband was younger than the eldest sister, and he was also an employee under the eldest sister.
This made me and the second sister and the third sister sigh, "It's still the eldest sister who can play." ”
Then I got married, my girlfriend is from a provincial town, the family conditions are better than ours, and she is also the only daughter in the family, and she has been pampered since she was a child.
But my wife is not a princess disease, but very virtuous, so until now, the two of us have been married for more than 30 years, and the relationship is still very good.
My mother still lives in my hometown every day, and after I got married, I wanted to bring my mother to live in the city, but my mother just didn't agree, for fear of affecting the lives of the two of us.
At that time, my wife also very much agreed with me taking my mother over, because after all, the old man is old, and it is definitely not very safe to live alone, and we are not at ease.
And the father-in-law and mother-in-law are two people who take care of each other, so we don't have to worry about it at all, no matter how hard my wife and I say, my mother just doesn't want to come.
It wasn't until my wife was pregnant that my mother came over, and we lied that my father-in-law and mother-in-law had to go to work, so we didn't have time to come, so my mother agreed to come and stay at our house.
Since then, the old house has been locked, and this lock is forever.
02
When my mother first moved in, she often woke up in the middle of the night and said that she felt the building shaking.
We just feel that this is a mother's delusion, but we have heard from others that people who are not used to living in buildings do feel this way, and the higher the floor, there will definitely be shaking when the wind is strong.
Since I came with my mother, I have been taking care of my wife until I gave birth to a child until the child entered elementary school, and my mother has long been accustomed to this place, and she has not said that she wants to go back to her hometown to live.
Every year during the Qingming Festival, we will still go back to the grave, every time we go back we have to go to the hometown to see, because no one lives all the year round, the old house is now covered with dust and cobwebs.
Some of the houses have cracked, and the fields in the yard that no one has tended to do are now covered with weeds.
But it is full of memories of my thirteen sisters and I when we were young, and every time I go back, I would sit in the yard with a small bench and watch for a long, long time.
Mother is going around, touching the walls of the house, walking along the house, mother must be very reluctant to be here, but this place is like this, there is no way to live here.
Compared to the house in the city, the current hometown is simply impossible to see, and I even have doubts, did I really live in this place when I was a child?
Why do I feel so strange now, and even feel a little deserted, compared to the home I remember.
The house is dilapidated like this, my mother and I can't do anything, and there are no people living here, so it's what it looks like.
Once, the eldest sister suddenly came back to see my mother, and then asked to go back to the old house to see, so I took the eldest sister and my mother back to the old house.
The feeling of coming back that time was different again, before my mother and I came back, this time there is an eldest sister, it seems that this place has become a little familiar again.
The eldest sister also sighed when she saw the old house, and she didn't forget to tease me, pointing to a corner of the house and saying: Brother, do you remember this place, this is your liing, and your second sister and third sister and I will block you here to teach you a lesson.
Speaking of this memory, I felt a sadness in my heart, and I couldn't go back to my life when I was a child, and when I was taught a lie by my three sisters, I felt like I was finished.
But now that I think about it, when I was a child, I felt that I couldn't get over it, but now it seems to be a very small thing, and when I am about to retire now, I like to think back on my life.
I just didn't know what kind of wind I smoked that day, so I sold the old house, and at that time I felt that no one lived in such a dilapidated house, and it was better to sell it to someone if it was put here.
Then it was sold to a family in the village at a price of 4,000 yuan, and they liked the geographical location of our hometown very much, not only the place is big, but also clean, and the geographical location is high in the village.
Then, after I retired, I took my mother on a trip, and looking back on my whole life, it seems that my mother has never left this place since she gave birth to me.
So I'm going to take my mother around now, because I seem to realize that time is running out for me.
My mother is now full of gray hair, but her body is still very strong, which is what I am most proud of my peers, many of the old people of my mother's age have either died or cannot move.
But now the mother can not only pick up her grandson from school, but also raise flowers at home, my mother has never lived in our house for so many years, and has never had a conflict with his wife, and there is no mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship at all.
I've heard before that my mother-in-law is in charge of a lot, or that my daughter-in-law dislikes her mother-in-law for being unhygienic, but my mother has been everyone's beautiful appearance since she was a child, and she loves cleanliness more than my wife.
When I went back to the grave in the first year, I saw that our hometown had been cleaned up, and the people who bought the place were ready to renovate and rebuild.
I didn't care, because after all, this house was already someone else's, but after I went back, I kept dreaming, dreaming of the scene when I was a child, and dreaming of the scene that day I saw the old house being cleaned.
I don't know why I feel an indescribable feeling in my heart.
The second time I went back, I really wanted to see what our old house was like now, and when I stood in front of the door, a small two-story western-style building appeared in front of me.
At this time, the owner of the house came out, and when he saw us, he quickly invited us to visit, the yard was very large, flowers and plants, and his own garage.
There are two living rooms, three bathrooms, two master bedrooms and four secondary bedrooms on the upper and lower floors, the space is incomparably large, and the decoration is also very atmospheric.
I was extremely envious when I saw this, I don't know how much better it is than the houses in our city, and I actually began to regret selling the old house.
When I went home, my mother and wife and I didn't say a word in the car, when the three of us went to Yunnan to travel, the homestay we lived in was a bit like this, the yard had a garden, and its own balcony.
Basking in the sun and drinking tea every day, but this kind of life seems to have been handed over by me.
I regret it very much, why did I sell the old house for 4,000 yuan at that time, I didn't feel that I had sold it at a loss, but I thought that the behavior of selling the old house was selling my roots.
That's where I was born and raised, if I was asked to make a choice, then I would definitely not sell the house, not to mention 40,000, even if I was given 400,000, I would not be able to sell.
People are hometown relatives, and the moon is hometown Ming. If your hometown has your own ancestral home, there will be more nostalgia and more concern!
Accustomed to the hustle and bustle of the city, when returning to his hometown of his ancestral home, that moment seems to be back to the dream time of childhood, the ancestral home is his roots, where the soul is, the spiritual sustenance, keep the ancestral home, repair the ancestral home, only worthy of their ancestors!
Now I have also been relieved, in fact, I also saw the old house that I didn't look down on in the past, and now Zhang's new house, a little envious, if the old house is in my hands, I may not have the courage to push it to the rebuild.
Now that I'm used to life in the city, maybe I'm not used to life in the countryside, and it's probably best to go for a few days.
It's like always feeling that your city is nothing, and you run from the place where your life is annoying to the place where other people's lives are annoying.