I really didn't expect that the years would destroy my life faster than I expected. Time was so fast that before I could lock in the setting sun, I could already smell the bells of dawn in my ears.
The mischievous teenager would sneak up the pear tree behind the neighbor's house on a hazy morning and chew hungrily on the unripe and sour fruit in the treetops. Until the taste buds are completely seduced, the gums are also worn out of the skin. The sky was getting brighter again, and then I cowered and sneaked home. Soon the whole village could hear the sound of my forty-six-year-old wife jumping under the pear tree and pointing at the mulberry locust. I could only quietly follow the two yellow cattle, hiding her ugly voice from the cattle herding path I was walking familiar with, at a constant distance interval, into the clouds on the top of the cattle herding mountain.
The boy who used to chase dreams was easily praised by a butcher in the clan. He said that I was a man of flat head and a wide forehead, and that I would be an official in the future; he often stroked my belly, which was swollen from lack of nutrition, and said that I was the 'arhat belly' of a blessed man. In fact, they all know that it is because of hunger and indiscriminate eating. Everything in the field must be eaten, called wild vegetable bark and grass roots; as long as it is roughly judged to be non-toxic, it is collected and stuffed into the mouth. Do you still say that I am the official of survival? They were all in the wrong position.
But at that time, I didn't care, I just hoped that when I grew up, I could volunteer with adults in the agricultural leisure season. In response to the call to go to the side of the cattle mountain, a place called Eagle's Mouth Rock was built to build a 'Qunying Reservoir', or to build a township road to Liudu Beach, or to Lilongyan to participate in basic farmland transformation and other projects. In this way, you can eat free anti-marketing grain supplied by the government during the work period. Say goodbye to the days when I can only squat on the fire in the middle of winter and eat only the fiery sweet potatoes and wrap my stomach; at the same time, I can also reflect that although I am a grass farmer, I am also a useful person to the country and a person who benefits the future generations of mankind.
When I think about it at this moment, I will dream easily every night. But the skinny white-flowered rooster of the Fourth Uncle's family is annoying, always shouting to wake me up when I dream of water. I had to stroke my belly with my hand to comfort myself, so that the grunting of my intestines would awaken the sleeping fleas, so that my skin would not feel the uncomfortable itch.
The ebb and flow of the tide began to cycle like this, and the teenager who did not know the height of the sky became a real illiterate; in the eyes of the villagers, he became a barbaric boy who did not understand human feelings. He can carry eighty or ninety pounds of farm manure to climb the mountain, can lead a very reluctant mule to plough the field, and can scare the weight of the wild mule. Under the words and deeds of the villagers and adults, they slowly learned to plant seedlings and hoe grass, learned to cut wood and dig coal, learned to break the mine and burn lime, and gradually learned the management skills of cultivating crops. I have become a useful person in their eyes, but I have failed to live up to their expectations that I am a person who does great things.
The folks who treated me have not yet woken up from yesterday's higher childhood assessment of me. I had run through half of my life, walked through two or twenty years in a trance, and walked in their footsteps.
Now the pear tree of the mother-in-law's house is still there, but its fruit today is not taken care of. Never again in the middle of the night in the moonlight, a teenager risked being caught by his master scratching its itch; never again could hear the sound of the woman jumping around and scolding wildly at the foot of the pear tree when the sky was clear. Today's village has fallen into a state of tranquility, which can also be said to be a return to simplicity and tranquility.
My childhood will never be repeated in my own life! I could only imprison longing in the concrete-poured pavilion; no one knew of my existence, and the soul seemed to be sentenced to death.
How far is life tomorrow? I couldn't calculate anymore, so I had to go forward with my head down.