Written by Wen Xiaohua Chongqing Stone Pillar
Editor/Yufu Shijiazhuang, Hebei
【Yu talks more than that】
Strong and irrefutable, wooden and reticent, and easy to express love for their children, we know the image of most Chinese fathers.
This article by a big name in the Shimen insurance industry, known as "Thorn Rose", and Chongqing's fellow Wen Xiaohuajie, describes a father who is not quite different: knowledgeable, can divinate the heavens, work hard while teaching and educating people, and treat people sincerely and hospitablely, and love their children even more, and try everything to find a good future for future generations. Such a father will naturally be respected and loved by the children.
Today is June 20, 2021, Father's Day in the West, and I miss my father who has already gone to heaven.
It has been 16 years since my father left our sisters, and whenever I think of his old man's home, my heart is always faintly painful. At 3:08 a.m. today, I suddenly woke up from my dream, and if I woke up in the middle of the night on weekdays, I would try to force myself to fall back to sleep, but this time, because I thought of my father, my heart could not be calm for a long time, and I let the feelings of longing flow in the night...
My father was a teacher before he was born, in addition to teaching his students carefully, he also had to do a good job in the daily management of a small person in charge. Because we have many sisters, my mother is industrious and capable but has no culture, and the burden of urging our children to learn and plan the future for our children all falls on the father alone.
Father is particularly strong, and he always wants to compete for an advanced and win the first. Because there are many children, in order to make the family more solid and affluent, but also to provide children with relatively superior material living conditions, every holiday, as long as the school or superior does not meet, the father either personally helps the mother to do farm work, or the neighbor helps my family to farm the land. Due to years of overwork, my father became ill with overwork, cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 49, and then developed into a half-body failure, and left us early at the age of 63, and he did not enjoy a few days of happiness in his life.
My father was very knowledgeable, and there were many yellowed ancient books in the family, literary masterpieces also had collections, and there were many books that Xiao Hou did not know, traditional characters, ancient texts, and now I think it may be "Three Character Classic", "Hundred Family Names", "Augmented Sage Text", "Tao Te Ching", "I Ching" and other books. My father was very traditional, and what he usually taught us was also the ancient language, which was spoken in these books. He knew astronomy and geography, liked to study the I Ching and metaphysics, could observe the heavens, and when he was a child, he always felt that his father knew everything and could do anything.
At that time, one of the things that was particularly amazing was that my father could accurately predict the weather forecast. Our family is in the mountains, climate change is very complex, my father will observe the direction of the clouds, the thinness of the clouds, including natural phenomena such as the habits of the surrounding organisms, he will tell his mother in advance, which days can dry the millet, which two days must fertilize the crops, which days must hoe off the weeds in the field, my father always has a very accurate grasp. It is under the scientific and reasonable guidance of my father that my family's crops are always better than the growth of other people's families, and there is always a big harvest every year.
For this reason, my uncle always laughed at my father, "You know everything on earth, and half of what heaven knows." Now that I think about it, my father was indeed very wise. Including the education of his children, he has been conscientious, every week after the school class, on Saturdays will walk two hours to the town middle school to visit the children who are studying, to see if we are in the state of learning, whether we are missing things and west, after reading it, we walk home. Early sunday morning, he mostly went into the county town to help his neighbors run errands, or went to visit friends and find ways to find a way out for a few children.
His father was sincere and enthusiastic about people, and in his spare time, he often invited guests to the house to eat or set up a dragon gate array. He likes to play gongs, and from time to time invites his gong friends to his home to practice gong and drum skills. These people came to our house, and my father always asked my mother to treat them as distinguished guests and cook the best food in the house to entertain the guests.
My father was very hospitable and genuinely warm to everyone. Our family lives next to the highway, is a traffic artery, ten miles and eight townships people to catch a car into the city, often two or three o'clock in the morning have to get up, walk two or three hours to rush to my home near the waiting car; live particularly far away from the village teachers, township government workers, in order not to delay into the city, some of them live in our home the first night, my father always very warmly welcome them, and treat them as guests, no accommodation fees, good food and drink free hospitality.
My father was an ordinary person who could not be more ordinary, but his integrity, kindness, diligence and simplicity, as well as his unremitting self-improvement, shrewdness and courage, as well as his tenacious struggle, sincerity to people, and his serious attitude towards life, had a very great impact on me. Whenever I encounter difficulties and setbacks in my life, I think of my father and the hard work he put in raising our five sisters. At that time, he and his mother worked hard to build such a large yard, like a rich family, and tried to make our sisters superior to their peers in both material conditions and spiritual life.
When I grew up, I married far to the north, encountered difficulties and setbacks, thought about my father, and suddenly felt that no matter how bitter it was, it was not as hard as my parents raising us, and no matter how difficult it was, it was not as difficult as my parents raising us! So I grasped the self-adjustment and revived it as soon as possible.
Once, when I went back to my hometown, I saw that my father could no longer walk on his own, and he basically couldn't take care of himself, but his consciousness was still quite clear, but he couldn't say his true thoughts. As soon as I heard that I was in a hurry to go back to Shijiazhuang to work, my father couldn't help but cry. I couldn't bear it in my heart and repeatedly postponed the return date.
On the day I left, I did not dare to say goodbye to my father, for fear that neither father nor daughter would be able to face the pain of separation. At five o'clock that morning, I quietly went downstairs to catch the first bus to Chongqing. At that time, the car had not yet arrived, I looked back upstairs, and saw my father, who usually could not take care of himself, standing in front of the window, crying with his mouth open, and the only one who could move was wiping tears and waving goodbye to me for a while.
At that moment, I cried out in pain, all the way to Chongqing, and now I think about it, I still have tears like rain...
Wen Xiaohua wrote on June 20, 2021 in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province
【Author's Profile】Wen Xiaohua, "post-70s", Chongqing Shizhu people, known as "thorn roses". Graduated from Chengdu Textile School, he worked in his hometown silk factory, jumped to Hebei Juecheng Industry and Trade Company due to uneasiness about the status quo, and then applied for a full-time lecturer at the insurance company, and is now the senior director assistant of Yuhua District of Hebei Ping An Insurance Company. Frank personality, lively and cheerful, sincere to people, like to record life with words.