For as long as I can remember, every Chinese New Year, my father woke me up from the bed early on the first day of the new year. My mother urged my brother and I to put on new clothes, and after washing our faces in a hurry, we started to eat breakfast. While eating, my father told us that after eating, we would go to kowtow to my uncle for the New Year!
After eating, under the leadership of the eldest brother, a group of three people walked towards the uncle's house. Every time we walked to the door of the uncle's house, the door was closed, and we had to shout the door in a loud voice, and it was about half an hour before we heard the sound of the door opening the door. The aunt had a bunch of keys in her hand, and she yawned as she opened the door.
Walking into the uncle's house, the uncle climbed on the kang with a quilt. A bowl was placed on the head of the kang, and the meat and bones in the bowl were steaming, and he was feasting! He glanced at us nonchalantly and continued to gnaw on his meat. The three of us had already knelt on the ground and kowtowed, but my aunt hurriedly pulled us up, and the eldest brother knelt down again to kowtow to her, and I knelt down again. My aunt brought us some candy and stuffed it into our hands. When the eldest brother asked the cousins, the aunt looked at the house to the east, and we looked in unison, and they were still sleeping. We left my uncle's house and walked towards the house, with the eldest brother walking in front and the younger brother and I counting the candy in our pockets as we walked.
When he got home, his father was already standing at the door, and he was smiling at the moment. He couldn't wait to ask if we were getting along with my cousins, and I realized that the reason why my father arranged for my eldest brother to kowtow to my uncle was nothing more than that he wanted him to invite his three cousins who worked in the provincial capital to come to his house for a light meal. Mother had already prepared food for them, and basically all the delicious food at home was prepared for them anyway. Neither my father nor my eldest brother drank alcohol, but my cousins liked to drink, so they bought a few bottles of good wine for stock. When the eldest brother told his father that his cousins were still sleeping and had not spoken, his father and mother waited at home for their arrival. From the morning to the afternoon, my father walked out of the house for a while, and returned from the outside for a while, which can be described as "looking forward to it", and he couldn't bear it, so he sent the eldest brother to the uncle's house to invite.
I now think that maybe without the deliberate invitation of my eldest brother, they probably wouldn't have come to my house so easily. Every time I come to my house, I am basically drunk. Mother still does her best to cook the food, even if they only take a symbolic bite or two with a chopstick, which is a happy thing for her. In fact, as soon as the cousins arrived at the house, they shouted that they wanted to drink, and their father and eldest brother hurriedly accompanied them, and before they had even taken a few sips of wine, they were already lying on the kang and falling asleep. My father didn't blame them, even if they didn't say a word to him when they fell asleep, but seeing them sleeping on the kang in my house was a comfort to him.
The relationship between my father and my uncle has been twisted since I was sensible. The uncle is an accountant in the village, he is financially wealthy, and his cousins are also very competitive, they were all admitted to the university, and later worked in the unit. My family's conditions are not good, and my eldest brother has not been admitted to university. The uncle was indifferent to his father, and even said cruel things in front of everyone that he didn't recognize his father as his younger brother at all. This indirectly affected me, causing me to not be very close to my uncle's family since I was a child, and whenever I saw a few cousins walking into the house, I would always find an excuse to sneak out. The winter in the north was very cold, so I simply ran to the village wheat field, where there were a few piles of straw, and I hid in a corner where others could not see, and spent time alone, and only when they were gone, did I slowly return home.
When I grew up, my father still couldn't move us to kowtow to my uncle, and I followed my two brothers, and when I was about to reach the door of my uncle's house, I ran into the straw pile again as soon as they were not paying attention. The purpose is just to avoid kowtowing to the uncle and meeting with the cousins. I can't remember how I hid in the corner of the straw pile as a child, and how I stayed up until they left and didn't come home, what was going on in my mind at that time? I just know that I don't want to see my father and his family trying to accommodate their efforts, and I'd rather they call me an ignorant child, and I'm not afraid.
This "estrangement" between me and my uncle made me not only alienate from him, but also regard him as an imaginary enemy, and the more mean he was to my father, the more I encouraged myself to work hard. Maybe my uncle has sensed my alienation from him, for example, when I walk on the road, when I see him from a distance, I will avoid greeting him, let alone his children. When they were young, they turned a blind eye because they were not strong. Things changed when I got to college. One year, during the Chinese New Year, Uncle took the initiative to invite us to his house for the first time, and just when I wanted to escape again, my father almost pleaded with me to hope that I could go to his house. That day, I turned out to be the "protagonist", my uncle kept serving me food, and my cousins clumsily expressed their closeness to me for the first time, and everything seemed so deliberate.
In the year of SARS, the uncle who lived in the county town suddenly suffered a stroke. After my father was the first to get the news, he consulted with me and hoped that I could visit my uncle on behalf of my family. At that time, the epidemic was raging, and the people in the village were terrified, and terrible rumors were spreading everywhere. In the face of the huge disaster, I also put aside my grievances against my uncle and went to the county seat to visit him. When I walked to the door of his house, I heard the desolate voice of the erhu.
After the door opened, the uncle with the erhu, moving his steps, the moment the uncle with a half-slanted face saw me, his eyes showed a look of surprise, joy and sadness, he beckoned me into the house, and poured water on my inflexible legs and feet, I noticed that he was obviously old and haggard. When I walked down the stairs and turned to look at him, I found him still standing at the door, wiping the corners of his eyes with his hands like a child, and I guess he never thought that I would visit him at such a moment.
The real "reconciliation" between me and Uncle happened shortly after my father's death, and Uncle brought his cousins to visit him. I thought my father would hate him, but what I didn't expect was that at the end of his life, the person he was most looking forward to seeing was actually an uncle. I used to think that my uncle was cruel to my father, but when I saw my uncle crying with his back to my sick father, I was suddenly relieved, not only forgiving my uncle from the bottom of my heart, but also unloading the emotional burden that had been pressing on my heart for a long time. It's like a tumor growing out of my heart, I have both hatred and love for it, but more than that, I am grateful, and it urges me to run all the way with low self-esteem and stubbornness. My reconciliation with my uncle is, more precisely, a reconciliation with myself, with the part of myself that I have always rejected, resisted, and denied.
When I went back to my hometown to visit him this year, he was already dying. Facial stroke recurrence, asymmetry of the left and right faces, and slurred speech. His memories are completely stuck in the past, and he remembers the past endlessly, but he almost loses his memory when he talks about the present. When I left my uncle, I stretched out my arms for the first time and took the initiative to hug him, just like hugging my father!