The days baked by the moonlight ‖ Dai Genghong

Days baked by the moonlight

Dai Genghong

The moon is slowly getting round, and the days are getting better. I believe.

Autumn is heavy on the branches, some leaves can't hold back and fall, some leaves are still evergreen after four seasons, and some leaves collect sunlight but bake themselves brown. Different people are like different leaves, going to life with different postures. A trail winds its way deep into autumn, the stone pavement is dry and refreshing, and the moss left by summer inexplicably disappears in autumn. What can't be taken away, can't be left behind, this is considered to be automatically cleared in the day. What is the day? Whether it is the deep and invisible sea, the ravine and valley, or the unobstructed Pingchuan, dear you, you will be able to tell me the answer.

Autumn colors in Aba Prefecture (Photo by Xu Chaozhong)

The Mid-Autumn Festival is coming, and I love to walk more at night, walking on the secluded country road, and accidentally colliding with the clear moonlight. The sky is like a curtain, the moonlight is like water, the distant mountains are incomparably magnificent, the fields are more feminine, and the indistinguishable aroma of grass and trees makes people intoxicated. There was more moonlight, pouring directly on the river, and the throbbing waves always made people wonder if there were a few fish kissing and chasing the moonlight. When the moon was in the sky, the stars dimmed, like the faint light of fireflies, and the little halo melted into the sky, and the stars quietly looked at the bright moon. A soft cloud, illuminated by the moonlight, spreads out the sparkling skirt, the clouds are the dancers of the sky, and the whirling dance steps make people have endless reverie. I also looked at the bright moon in the distance.

From the silent moonlight, feeling the tranquility and joy is the gift of the years, and the moonlight of the Mid-Autumn Festival is more meaningful, more thoughts and expectations. There was a father's warm gaze in the silver moonlight, and I had been firmly so since four years ago. As the Mid-Autumn Festival approached, I found that there was still my father's smile in the moonlight, so the moonlight had a temperature, my thoughts had a direction, and the Mid-Autumn Festival became more full.

I was lucky. Some people say that father is a mountain and silent. Some people say that father is a book, obscure. Some people say that the father is a thermos bottle, cold on the outside and hot on the inside. My father was obviously a different version, cheerful, optimistic, humorous, attentive, mischievous, and somewhat bookish. My father is the big tree in the family, holding up a piece of the sky, and with his mother, he leads three yellow haired girls, loves life, and is also loved by life.

In my childhood, there was not much mention of ritual, but every festival was taken seriously, solemnly and joyfully, so there was no need to emphasize. The Mid-Autumn Festival, a festival of vivid colors, occupies a very important place in childhood memories. At that time, the home was not spacious, but there was a row of pomegranate trees in front of the house, and although the pomegranate tree belonged to the school where the parents taught, the joy brought by the pomegranate tree was freely claimable. Every year from the pomegranate tree to the new leaves to the flowering and fruiting, the children's hope will not be less every year. Before the Mid-Autumn Festival, the school will organize school workers to pick pomegranates uniformly, and the pomegranates picked will be divided equally among the teachers of the whole school. My father would always ask the school worker to keep one or two pomegranates to hang on the tree in front of the door, which was beautiful.

Pomegranate tree in Copper Mine Village, Luchang Town, Huili County (Photo by Pengzhou Xianshi)

On the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the moon is much higher than the pomegranate hanging in the treetops, the father and mother will set up a table and a small stool under the pomegranate tree, and then pile the small square table with delicious ones, mooncakes, fruits, fried chestnuts, and boiled peanuts. Large round quiches are placed in the middle of the table, followed by white shortbreads with various fillings cut into small pieces. The mother's plate of mooncakes is very beautiful, with Russian flavor, usually placed in the chest of drawers to hold water cups, only on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the plates shine. Mooncakes, which have always been loved by the people of my hometown, are freshly baked by local grain and fruit factory masters. Two weeks before the Mid-Autumn Festival, the streets of the small city are overflowing with the fragrance of mooncakes, which seems to grow hands, pulling your neck long, and your eyes are stuck with the crisp mooncakes, and you can't move. White shortbread has a variety of fillings, date paste, cloud legs, ice oranges, roses, five kernels, washing sand... The filling is so sweet, and I love the layered, oily, thin as a cicada's wing, and the bite is like a snowflake falling mooncake puff pastry. Every time my father took the mooncake from the plate, he would gently tap on the edge of the plate, and a large piece of puff pastry would fall on the plate, and then stare at me and smile. I looked at the transparent puff pastry in the moonlight, emitting fantastic colors, and I thought that the mooncake was a small moon.

In the middle of the moon, the story about the "white jade plate" began to be told under the pomegranate tree, usually the father was the main speaker, the mother was smiling on the side, Chang'e, Wu Gang, jade rabbit, pig eight precepts, stepping on the auspicious clouds, stepping on the moonlight fluttered. When the children were still inexhaustible, the mother's song bloomed like a hundred lotuses:

August 15 is bright

Grandpa made mooncakes for me

The mooncake is round and sweet and fragrant

A piece of mooncake a piece of love

Grandpa was an old Red Army

Grandpa treated me like kisses and kisses

I sang songs for Grandpa

Dedicate a piece of heart to Grandpa

Then, on the way to growth, a lot of Mid-Autumn Festival and a lot of lonely moons came to step on. Some thin days, stained with cold, danced with the autumn wind. Some of the night roads had to be walked by themselves, and my father walked away silently, but still gently tapped the mooncake puff pastry for me in the moonlight, until finally he turned himself into a beam of moonlight, shining on my way forward.

I was lucky. One day I sat under another pomegranate tree, plump and succulent pomegranate hanging in the treetops, like little lanterns, still so beautiful. Dusk fell from between the branches, melting warmth and laughter flowing through the yard, the door of memory was pushed open, I was in a trance for a while, will the birds that flew away really fly back in another piece of moonlight? Is it that the call from the bottom of the heart is too strong, constantly making a firm and strong sound for the birds to hear.

The night grew thicker, the moonlight stretched my figure, the occasional dog bark came from the distant cottage, and a yellow orchid tree shook the fragrance of flowers happily. In such a world, I looked at the moon quietly, and the moonlight paved me.

The moon has seen the cold and warm of the world, and has also experienced the vicissitudes of the sea and mulberry fields, and it is still warm as ever. When the moon is missing, people are expected, and when the moon is full, it makes people happy, and no piece of moonlight is empty and pale. The moon is slowly getting round, just to tell me that the days will slowly get better. The days baked by the moonlight have always been by my side.