<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1" > spiny heart, mother's labor. </h1>
- "The Book of Poetry and Kaifeng"
If my grandmother had lived, she would have been exactly a hundred years old this year.
In fact, her old man has always lived, in front of my eyes, in my heart.
My grandmother was an ordinary rural woman, who never went out of her hometown for dozens of miles in her life, and did not achieve anything major. But her bits and pieces of family-rearing have converged into a great river of love, nourishing my body and mind, and flowing on the road of my life.
One
My grandmother was 50 years old when I was born.
My grandmother had no biological children, my father was her adopted son, and I was her eldest grandson. My grandmother gave me all her love for her children and grandchildren.
When I was two or three years old, my grandmother used to carry me to the bridge on the southwest highway of the village to see the car. In the early 1960s, countrymen saw cars coming and going and found it fresh. I don't remember this, but the little-footed woman who is more than half a hundred years old carries a big fat boy back and forth for seven or eight miles, and it is not easy to think about it.
I heard my grandmother say that my mother gave birth to me without enough milk, so I had to add complementary food. My grandmother mixed white noodles and fine cornmeal and fried them, brewing them in hot water to form a paste and feeding them to me. Later, my grandmother often nagged: "They all say that after eating the rice paste, they are confused, but my grandson is smarter than their better suckling." "There is a lot of self-satisfaction between words.
For as long as I can remember, I slept with my grandmother at night. In the summer, there were many mosquitoes, and my grandmother lit a "fire rope" made of corn whiskers instead of mosquito coils, and when the smoke cleared, I was allowed to enter the house and fan until I fell asleep. In winter, the bedding was cold, and my grandmother burned the fire, and sometimes squatted on the charcoal brazier on the roof and used a hot water bottle or a warm water bag to heat the quilt before letting me sleep. Seeing that my hands and feet were too cold, he put his arms around me to give me warmth, and said: "Grandma is not afraid of cold, Grandma is warm in winter and cool in summer." "I used to let my grandmother tickle me. My grandmother's hands were rough, but I felt very comfortable. When my grandmother was tired, she said, "You are comfortable, and you will serve me." "I got up and beat my grandmother's back and stomped on her waist.
Elementary school in this village, not far away. In junior high school in the town, there are five or six miles. I was never late for school, it wasn't that I got up early, it was that my grandmother got up early every day. On winter mornings, everyone loves the bed, and my grandmother told me to get up after making the meal. By the time I was hastily dressed, my grandmother had poured warm water into the basin and placed the hot meal on the table. My grandmother used to tell her neighbors, "Anyway, I can't let my child go to school hungry, so I can make him a bowl of hot porridge to drink." ”
When I was a child, I sat at the small Kang desk and scribbled my homework, and my grandmother sat next to me with reading glasses and sewed clothes one by one, and from time to time looked at me with kind eyes - that was always a warm scene in my heart.
In the year of the college entrance examination, a wind of "divination for helpers" came from nowhere in the village. My grandmother, who had never believed in ghosts and gods, respectfully invited those people to her house and dangled them around with her face to give me a count. When I returned home, my grandmother mysteriously told me, "I asked Daisen to give you the calculation, and I will definitely be admitted to college." I said, "Grandma, how can you even believe this?" The grandmother was angry: "Don't be fooled, it is better to believe than not to believe!" My eyes were moist.
When I was admitted to college, the whole family was happy, my grandmother was even happier, and she took the illiterate letter and turned it over and over, happily closing her mouth. My father took me to Beijing and watched me get on the train, and when I came back, my grandmother got angry with him and complained that she hadn't sent me to school in the provincial city.
When I was in college, the ancient Chinese teacher recommended a very precious set of "Ancient Books and Imaginary Characters". Because the bookstore could not buy it, several of our classmates borrowed it from the teacher and copied it separately. During the summer vacation, I took back some of the manuscripts and sat at a small desk every day to copy books. The grandmother who came to the family said, "If a child writes a book, don't disturb him." "It makes me embarrassed. I thought that I would definitely write a book for my grandmother in the future, but this dream did not come true until her old man's death.
In my heart, my grandmother is home. From elementary school to college, the first thing I said when I went home and entered the hospital was "Grandma", and my grandmother naturally enjoyed this call. After work, every time I came home, my grandmother looked at me affectionately and couldn't see enough. Sometimes when I came back on weekends and saw my grandmother waiting for me at the door on crutches or on a small bench, my nose was sour. Before leaving, my grandmother moved to the mouth of the alley in advance to see me go out, and kept watching me leave her sight...
When I got married, my grandmother got angry with her parents because the wedding was too simple. However, her old man caught up with the "four generations" and met my daughter, her great-granddaughter. At that time, my grandmother's waist could not stand up straight, but she also carried a small bench to bring the fruit, canned food, and milk powder sent to her by relatives to my house, saying that she wanted her granddaughter-in-law to increase nutrition.
After my grandmother fell ill in her later years, I washed her feet several times. My grandmother wouldn't let me wash them, saying her feet were smelly and ugly. At my insistence, my grandmother put her feet in the basin. Touching the thin and deformed little feet, thinking of my grandmother's life's toil, tears dripped on my grandmother's feet, and my grandmother's tears also dripped on my hands...
I was 27 years old the year my grandmother died. I was devastated by the loss of my grandmother's caresses. Before my grandmother's new grave, I prostrated my head respectfully 28 times in gratitude for the great kindness I had enjoyed from my mother's womb.
Two
When I was a child, I went to school, filled out the "student registration form", and wrote to my grandmother that my occupation was "farming". When my grandmother was young, she may have worked in the fields, but in my memory, she seems to have been "housekeeper". "Housekeeping" is actually much more tiring than crop work. There is still room for rest in the crop work, and in the winter, it is basically closed, but the housework is burning the fire to cook, sewing and sewing, feeding the pigs and chickens, cleaning the table and sweeping the yard... Always no idle. My grandmother spent her life in such a very ordinary and extremely busy way.
Our brothers both loved to eat the food made by my grandmother, saying that she cooked fragrantly in the old man's house. When I was a child, there was a shortage of edible oil, and rural people rarely ate stir-fried vegetables, often pickled vegetables in autumn and winter, and mixed vegetables in spring and summer. In autumn and winter, grandmothers often sprout bean sprouts. Soybean sprouts are good, and they become in a few days, and they are used to make dishes with both bean flavor and umami taste. Sometimes add a little dried eggplant skin, it will look better and taste more. It is more difficult to make mung bean sprouts, and it takes longer. There must be a special jar, but also to change the water every day to observe. The bean sprouts sent by the grandmother, some white and fat, some slender and slender, are all delicious.
Fewer dishes in winter. Considering the family's vegetables, my grandmother had already pickled the pickles for the winter in the autumn. There are several pickle jars in the house, large and small, which are full in late autumn. In addition to radishes and cabbage, there are mustard greens, cowpeas, lentils, artichokes, peppers, cucumbers, garlic and so on. Every time I ate, my grandmother would put a few small plates of pickles. Our brothers picked cucumbers, pickled garlic, and artichokes, which were "delicious", and my grandmother ate some turnip cabbage, sometimes nibbling on cabbage lumps.
The pickles made by my grandmother are the most delicious "tempeh". This is a traditional pickle that has been passed down in the Gu'an and Yongqing areas. The main ingredient is soybeans, and the auxiliary ingredients are green peppercorns, ginger shreds and almonds. The soybeans are cooked, covered with alfalfa leaves and dried until they become moldy and hairy, then the beans are kneaded clean and put on the altar, poured with salt water and fermented. It is edible after more than a month. Every autumn, my grandmother filled up large bottles and small cans and ate them until February or March of the following year.
In pasta, my grandmother had a very good set. It is said that when her grandmother was young, she and the adults burned cakes in the town, so pasta was a "light road" for her. When the family had freshly squeezed castor seed oil or soybean oil, my grandmother had to use the "fried goods" first to cook the raw oil. Then we can feast on our mouths. In addition to fried tofu bubbles and radish balls, my grandmother also made us "fried cakes" and "row forks". The "croquettes" are soft, the "row forks" are hard, and the grandmother wants to make two portions of the noodles. The noodles of the "row fork" are mixed with brown sugar, and when the noodles are rolled, some sesame seeds are added, and the browned yellow is sweet and crispy, which is a great delicacy of my childhood.
When summer is at its hottest, my grandmother loves to make cold noodles. Cold noodles are delicious, not only to see the noodles but also to see the brine. If time permits, my grandmother will make several things when she marinates: fried sauce, sesame sauce, and vegetable brine. Inside the vegetable brine, my grandmother likes to put some yellow flower fungus. The vegetables are usually cucumber carobs and bean sprouts. To make a good brine, you also have to smash garlic and fry pepper oil. The same was ready, and the grandmother began rolling noodles. There is a special rolling pin at home, one meter long and one hand thick. The grandmother held a large rolling pin in both hands and rolled the dough into a flatbread, then rolled the flatbread into thin slices, and finally rolled it out with a small rolling pin. After a while, the rolling sound of "clucking" becomes the face-cutting sound of "dangdang". When the thin and long noodles were cooked and put in the cool water basin, our brothers were already sitting at the table waiting for the food. At this time, the hot sweaty grandmother even said with a sneer: "Little hungry wolves, hurry up and be a child, are you still waiting for me to feed?" "My grandmother's cold noodles are often salty, and I don't know if it's the salt she put in the noodles or the sweat she shed when rolling the noodles.
When the winter was the coldest, my grandmother loved to make dumplings and said that she was warm ate. Every time I walk home from the snow and hear the sound of "Dangdang" chopping, a warm current will gush in my heart. Making dumplings is not simple, the key is that the filling should be fragrant. The main dish in winter is cabbage, and when you eat cabbage, your grandmother puts "ingredients" in the filling. Sometimes put meat residue, sometimes put fried noodles, sometimes put a handful of fried rolled peanut rice, so that you can really improve the taste.
When I was young, life in the countryside was still difficult. Although the bitter days of "half a year's grain of bran vegetables, thin porridge shining on the moon" have passed, but in general, the family is still dominated by coarse grains, and white noodles can only be eaten in the autumn and wheat autumn when the farm work is tense or the new year is festive. In addition to corn flour, coarse grains also include sorghum flour, soybean flour, white potato flour and so on. Every day, the nest head cake is boiled porridge and boiled cabbage, who will get tired of eating it. So my grandmother changed her "innovation" in a different way. Corn flour mixed with some vegetables and vegetables baked paste, knots, mixed with some bean noodle steamed nest head, steamed silk cake, stall cake, mung bean noodle sorghum noodle potato dried bread dumplings... Some pasta is now rarely seen. For example, "small tofu", soybeans are steamed and chopped and boiled together with cabbage leaves to make porridge; "wontons", which are made of sorghum noodle soup made by a special hand noodle machine - "wonton bed"; "gold wrapped silver cake", a "fake" white bread bread made of white bread on the outside of cornmeal - in fact, "gold wrapped silver" is said in terms of value, but in terms of color, it is silver wrapped in gold. The most difficult thing to do is "yu'er soup", with warm water and good fine corn flour, cut into small diamond-shaped pieces, shake it with a dustpan to cook the soup to eat, sometimes for good taste, also wrapped in a layer of white noodles, but also made into the so-called "gold wrapped silver". Few people will make this "soup" now, and not many people will write it.
Cooking is the busiest part of the New Year. As soon as the "Little Year" of the 23rd lunar month passed, my grandmother steamed steamed steamed bean buns pot by pot, made rice cake stove cakes, and stewed pork and tofu noodles and smorgasbord. The staple food should be a basket, and the stew should be made into a large basin, just to save trouble and save fire for eating in the first month. My grandmother was often so tired that she couldn't stand up straight, so she called me to pinch her waist and beat her back.
My grandmother's meals nurtured me, and my grandmother's tastes influenced me. Since I was a child, I loved to eat ginger and coriander, and I loved to chew peppercorns and large ingredients, all of which had the shadow of my grandmother.
Three
Grandmothers are not only "cooks" in the family, but also "breeders", and chickens and rabbits are fed by grandmothers. Our brothers were in charge of "sales", going to the town's buying station to sell rabbits and eggs. Of course, we also pull grass from the ground to feed the rabbits, and in the evening catch flying insects under the trees on the edge of the village to feed the chickens. The plucked grass has to be clean and chopped before the rabbit loves to eat, so the grandmother has to chop it every day. Chicken feed depends on the grandmother's mix, usually wheat bran, bran and grass, and sometimes "improve life" to mix them with cornmeal.
At that time, chickens were the "small banks" of each family, and the pocket money was pointed to selling eggs, and they were reluctant to eat themselves, and only during the New Year's Festival and relatives from home did they fry a few. In the hutongs, there are often people who go from village to village to sell chickens, attracting the elderly lady and children to watch. The children are here to see the freshness, and the old lady is to buy chicks. Grandmother bought the chick carefully, turned it over and looked at it. Chickens bought back, how many days do not dare to put into the chicken nest, afraid to let the weasels take away, put in the kangtou basket, every day to feed them millet to eat. When the chicks grew up to be able to distinguish between male and female, the grandmother smiled and said, "Hey hey, these two roosters have looked away." ”
Although it costs money to buy chicks, sometimes grandmothers let the old hens incubate by themselves. Of course, this has to be a bit of a problem. The first is to pick eggs, the key is to have vitality, so every egg grandmother has to look at the sun for half a day, and I didn't know the reasoning at the time. When the eggs hatched, the old hen became the head of the family. The grandmother invited it to the hot kang head and wrapped it around the old quilt. During the day, the old hen "goes to work" in Kangtou; at night, the grandmother sleeps next to the egg and gets up in the middle of the night to make the eggs heat evenly. Get up in the morning, check the eggs one by one to see if they are damaged, check and then hold the mother chicken up. After 21 days, the chicken is about to come out of the shell. Our brothers also gathered around my grandmother like chickens, staring wide-eyed and looking closely. "Yikes! This crack is gone! "Wow! That's gone! ”
If raising chickens is a "small bank" in the family, then raising pigs can be regarded as "big savings". Although raising pigs takes a long time, it takes more than half a year from piglets to pigs, but the income from selling pigs is considerable, so most people raise pigs. The grandfather watched the yard for the production team, the father worked in the county town, the mother taught in the village, and the work of feeding the pigs naturally fell to the grandmother. Pigs, like people, eat three meals a day, and after each meal, the grandmother cleans up the dishes and chopsticks, and then cooks for the pigs - boiling pig food, boiling pig food and then carrying a large bucket to feed the pigs. I was so tired that I called my sister and me to help carry it. In the middle of the meal, the grandmother also added two "snacks" to the pig: chopping vegetables and grass, mixing with bran or cornmeal.
Feeding the pigs is dirty and tiring. Rural areas often say "squat pigs feed dogs", every time after feeding pigs, grandmothers do not say that their waists and legs hurt, and they also stick to a body of pig food. She insisted on it, and then the waist pain was so hard to straighten up, that she ended this heavy housework.
Four
In terms of needlework, my grandmother is not very delicate, but she can pick up everything.
There is an ancestral needle and thread basket in the house, wooden, regular polygonal, and a purple-red sugar gourd-shaped needle and thread board inside, which makes the grandmother shine with oil. When I was young, my grandmother sewed up my family's clothes and socks when they were torn. There are several wooden "sock boards" in the home, which are convenient for repairing socks. Her grandmother's clothes she said were "not good" and mostly cut and sewn by herself.
Rural people wear cloth shoes all year round, so grandmothers often do not leave the hand of the top and the sole of the shoe - twisting the twine, the sole of the shoe, and going to the neighbor's house to visit the door is also chatting while doing the work in her hand. Grandmother's sole, the stitches are very dense. Our brothers and sisters grew up wearing single shoes and cotton shoes made by our grandmothers.
When I first remembered, there was a "dye shop" in the town, and the family bought white cloth and sent it to the dye shop to dye the desired color to make clothes. In order to save money, my grandmother also bought dyes from the store to dye herself, but due to poor technology, it was often unevenly stained with spots, and my grandmother smiled and said, "Alas, just wear it as a flower dress." ”
When I was in elementary school, there was a side business in the village, which bought flowery and green cloth heads and cloth strips from the city, distributed them to each family to make insoles, and then sold them to the city. Rural people have never seen such a good cloth, so they take their own old cloth "shoddy" to replace it, and then put the cloth heads and cloth strips in the city into small pieces, and then put them together to make mattress sheets and sheets, and then make clothes with larger pieces of cloth. In those years, my grandmother would fight on the kang as soon as she had time. How much effort my grandmother used, how much needlework I did i not know. I only know that more than ten years after her old man's death, her home and relatives' homes are still paved with "handicrafts" sewn by her grandmother.
When I started college, I wore my grandmother's dyed pants, my grandmother's cotton shoes, my grandmother's stitched sheets, and my grandmother's self-made school bag. My classmates in the city laughed at me for being rustic, but what I felt was my grandmother's thoughtfulness and expectations.
Five
My grandmother was illiterate, in her words, "blind," but in my eyes, she was very intelligent, my initiation teacher.
Grandmother was very studious. Although she has lived in the old society for half a lifetime, she always says that "when you go to the new society, you must follow the society." In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, she was very serious about learning to read with her son and daughter-in-law. However, after learning and learning, from "one" to "ten", I also know the very simple 30 words of "up, down, large, small, people, mouth, hands, knives, cattle, sheep", etc., and there is no way to read books.
My grandmother didn't know how to read, but she told me two anagrams, "one point and one horizontal, two legs and one twist" is "wen", "one point and one horizontal, two eyes and one stare" is "six". She also taught me how to write the word "Gu'an" in my hometown. Saying that the word "solid" must be "out of breath" cannot be sealed; the "treasure cover" of the word "An" cannot be too big, "if you want to make the word safe, you must have a small treasure cover" - I really don't know where she learned it.
My grandmother couldn't read, but she knew how well she wrote. When I first learned to write, my grandmother told me that words were made by our ancestors and were the most spiritual. Be sure to write horizontally and vertically, with strong skim, well-behaved, neat and tidy, not crooked, missing arms and legs. Write well together, don't always think about using an eraser. Write a sentence is a sentence, do not cross it out and rewrite it. All of this had an impact on my writing.
My grandmother attached great importance to the training of speaking, and from a young age, she told our brothers that "a good horse is out of the legs, and a good man is out of the mouth." Someone came to the house and taught us to say hello. Just saying hello is not enough, but also learning to "see who says what". To be honest, I haven't learned this well until now.
My grandmother couldn't read, but she loved books so much that she idolized them. There is a "yellow calendar" in the family that does not know which year, and my grandmother has been reluctant to throw it away. Thin yellow paper, vertical printing double folding, calendar, festivals, agricultural proverbs and small stories, pictures of the four seasons and the harvest of farming. There is also a set of thread-bound "Kangxi Dictionary" that is her "treasure", wrapped layer after layer with blue cloth. The grandmother said that it was made up by the Kangxi Emperor, and the grandfather used several pockets of corn to exchange for it, which was very precious, and it would be a great learning to see. I often open the line-bound books and turn them around blindly.
During the Cultural Revolution, the whole country recited Chairman Mao's quotations and poems. This was a shame for my grandmother. My mother and I taught in pieces, and my grandmother only remembered simple words such as "study well and improve every day", "Fight for private criticism and repair", "Serve the people" and so on. I can't remember anything else, and I made a lot of jokes. For example, "The revolution is not a dinner party" is said to be "the revolution is not a guest or a meal", and "the mountain dance silver snake, the original chi wax elephant" is said to be "there are snakes on the mountain, willing to eat hot sauce", which makes us laugh. My grandmother also laughed and said, "I am a local citizen, where can I learn Chairman Mao's words?" ”
It's been more than 20 years since my grandmother left.
My grandmother worked hard all her life and left a deep and warm love, but did not leave her name. I only know that her old man's surname is Gao, and she calls herself Zhao Gao.
(August 2016, revised in March 2021)
About author:Zhao Jianxin, graduated from the Department of Chinese of Hebei Normal University. Director of the Education Supervision Office of Langfang Municipal People's Government, Director of preschool Education Professional Committee of Hebei Education Association, Academic Committee Member of Hebei Early Childhood Psychological Education Society, member of Langfang Family Education Lecturer Group. Engaged in basic education management for 20 years, he has devoted himself to the study of preschool education and family education, and has insisted on training primary and secondary school teachers and parents for many years, and publicizing education policies and regulations. Many articles such as "Principles of Kindergarten Environment Creation", "A Brief Discussion on the Roots of Kindergarten Primary School", and "Cultivating Children's Habits is the Primary Task of Parents" have been published in provincial and municipal newspapers and periodicals. The main lectures include "The main task of kindergarten education is to cultivate habits", "Which line to let the child win", "Kindergarten safety management", "Don't hurt the child in the name of love", "Let the child walk a good life" and so on. He has given family education lectures on "Let Children Win at the Finish Line", "Four Principles implemented in the "Guide to learning and development of children aged 3-6 years old", "How to cultivate children's language ability" and so on. The tutoring monograph "Guide to the Learning and Development of Children Aged 3-6 in <> 36 Lectures for Parents" was published by Beijing Normal University Press in April 2017 and was well received by preschool education experts and parents.