Essay | Zhao Hongmei: My Great White Rabbit Milk Candy

Text/Zhao Hongmei

Is there any person who remembers your preferences more clearly than anything, even if the vicissitudes of the sea and the stars shift, the love for you is still there? Whether your answer is yes or no, I believe there must be.

For various reasons, my father and I have been separated for nearly 20 years. In this long and fast time, I have imagined many kinds of reunion scenes - sad, joyful, gorgeous, poor... However, when that day really came, I was blurred by tears, and I couldn't see what the scene was. The only thing that comes to my mind is the sugar that came into my mouth from a pair of rough hands. I choked and chewed slowly with tears of joy.

Friends and family who came to visit surrounded me as if they were watching a species on the other side of the Atlantic. Greetings from the "other" world became noisy amid the sound of firecrackers. At that moment, I never saw a face. Those rough hands held me like a three-year-old child, smiling from the crowd to the place I had been looking forward to for nearly 20 years—home.

The crowd that came to Hexi dispersed, and the big hands once again peeled off a milk candy wrapped in a great white rabbit and stuffed it into my mouth, and a familiar and unfamiliar children's song sounded in my ears: "Great white rabbit, white and white, two ears stand up..." "When you were a child, you liked to eat the great white rabbit milk candy, eat more." Dad wrapped his dry arms around me, and through the thick cotton coat, he could feel his skinny bones. At the moment of hugging, he seemed to spend all his strength. The embrace with the white rabbit milk candy is sweet and bitter.

Every time I came home after that, I was able to eat the white rabbit milk candy prepared by my father in advance.

When I got home from summer vacation, I didn't wait for a few words of greeting, and my father was going to ride out on his bicycle. "Dad, where are you going?" "I'll be back in a minute." He was used to silence, and he was used to being silent. After a while, a few bags of snacks and a bottle of old dry mother were in front of me.

"Dad, I'm not a kid, I don't have to buy these, I don't eat snacks." "Eat, look, this, crunchy." As he spoke, he opened a packet and took out a piece and stuffed it into my mouth. Looking at my eating appearance, Dad showed a happy smile. He knows I like spicy food, and every time I come back to this home in the north, he buys something spicy. In the vegetable garden, peppers were also planted.

No matter how old you are, in the eyes of your parents, you are still the cute, gluttonous child you were when you were a child.

Before leaving, My father repeatedly told me to bring the rest of the snacks. I don't want to bring too many things. While stranded at the train station, I was looking for something only to find several bags of snacks and a pack of white rabbit milk candy buried in the bottom of the backpack. The anxiety and uneasiness that was originally due to the suspension of the train disappeared at the moment of seeing the great white rabbit milk candy. That time, a few bags of snacks and a pack of white rabbit milk candy accompanied me through the delayed trip of several days.

Dad doesn't like to express himself, maybe he doesn't know how to express himself. Every time I came home, he only knew how to give me the best food and give me the things he didn't want to use. In the last 20 years, there have been too many gaps between us. I didn't know how young and strong he looked, and he didn't know how naughty I looked.

However, in the past 20 years, times have changed, and what has not changed is the father's love. Across mountains and rivers, through the north and south, we each guard the people we want to protect.

Looking at the starry sky, I miss it as sweet as milk candy. Ren Yun Cirrus Cloud Shu, I only hope that my great white rabbit milk candy has always been there.

【About the Author】

Zhao Hongmei, a post-90s English teacher who likes to record her life in words, wants poetry and distant places, and also wants a warm and stable home. Essays, poems and other works are scattered in newspapers and periodicals.

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