Dad and Mom's Love
For as long as I can remember, my father went out to work with the village people during the farming season, leaving all the farming work at home to my mother to manage. Whenever my father came back, my mother was interested in letting him talk about what was new outside. Later, when my father grew older and my mother was not well, my father contracted two acres of land in the village to plant fruit trees. He carried a hoe to the orchard every day to weed and spray pesticides on the fruit trees, and when the fruit was ripe, he was busy picking it and selling it at the market. When he came back, he scattered a pocketful of change on the bed, and his mother happily counted them one by one, smoothed them one by one, and chattered incessantly about his recent expenses. My father was having fun with a glass of sorghum wine and a plate of dishes that my mother had already cooked. The mother, most of the time, is at home doing housework, laundry, cooking, feeding the chickens and ducks, sometimes to the neighbors' young daughters-in-law with children, or helping cut a shoe pattern, as soon as the father returned from the orchard, the mother will put down the work in hand, very seriously to the father to pour wine, serve food, and sit with the father to talk about the household chores and the fruits of the garden and the crops in the field. Sometimes, I heard them complaining to each other, and my mother would always say that there was no end to the work in the field and that my father should come home early tomorrow. When my father came home and saw my mother busy, he blamed her for being idle.
