Unequal love

From a very young age, I was aware that my father had made strenuous efforts to win my mother. Back then, the mother almost nagged daily, claiming that on the first day my father saw her, he requested to stay at her house, citing the excuse of darkness and the long distance, unable to return; She also said that in order to pursue her, my father risked punishment by running out of the army in the middle of the night to catch a train to see her, and was eventually punished for her, with a star removed from his epaulette.

My father and mother did not lead a happy life, at least in my view.

My mother was born into a scholarly family and had a penchant for dancing and ink-writing, while my father became a soldier at the age of 17 and often struggled with unfamiliar words when reading newspapers. Since my childhood, I have frequently witnessed them quarrelling, with my mother always yelling at my father over some trifles.

Initially, my father would smile and utter something soothing to defuse my mother's rage. However, my mother was always unrelenting, eager to break things, complaining about how aggrieved she was and how blind she had been to marry such a worthless man.

For over 20 years, the most common complaint I heard from my mother was about my father's failure.

My mother always maintained that my father had nothing, except for the ability to crack a few jokes. I admit that my father was not highly skilled. He had always been an ordinary officer, and was considered "short" and "bow-legged" in my grandmother's eyes. But he was my father and the pillar of the family. Since childhood, I have felt injustice on behalf of my father.

My mother was not good at cooking, and in her own words, "I'm not cut out for the kitchen." When I was young, my father had not yet been transferred back to Chongqing. Every weekend, when my father returned from the army, his first responsibility was to go to the vegetable market, and then he would cook for my mother and me for two full days.

For as long as I can remember, my father belonged in the kitchen. Earlier, we lived in a private dormitory in my mother's unit. The kitchen was in the corridor, and every time my father came back, he was busy outside the house from dawn to dusk, filled with the smell of oil smoke and sweat.

My father was an excellent cook. Every time my mother and father quarrelled, my father would sulkily hide in the kitchen to make soup. My mother adored soup very much.

No matter how heartbroken the quarrel was or how bitterly she cried, as soon as the fragrant soup entered the room, she would immediately stop crying, sobbing and sit down at the table.

At the end of each weekend, the fridge would be stocked with food and the water glasses and kettles filled with hot water. For the next five days, the only chore my mother had to do was to take the food out of the fridge and warm it up on the stove. Even so, my mother often grumbled that my father was not around to take good care of us both.

Although my father only came home on weekends, apart from cooking, he was also concerned about other family affairs, regardless of their size. Not only did my mother seldom leave the house, she rarely even washed her own clothes, let alone took care of me.

In my third year of high school, after much effort, my father was finally transferred back to Chongqing to take better care of my mother and me. During the year I spent with my parents, I became acutely aware of the imbalance between my mother and my father. Every time a guest came to our house, my mother liked to scold my father in front of the guest, stating what she had contributed to the family, such as earning a lot of money for it.

What I couldn't tolerate was that my mother liked to say to my father: "Yesterday, someone in our unit invited me to dinner. He is much better than you." Or "We can get a divorce." Every time my father heard this, he would merely reply with one word, "Yes," and then continue cooking as if nothing had happened.

During my sophomore year, my father was hospitalised. My father was diagnosed with liver cancer, which was already in an advanced stage when discovered. After receiving this news, I returned to Chongqing by train from Shanghai the next day.

This time, my mother went to the hospital for the first time and stopped reading and writing, but instead accompanied my father's bedside. When I saw my mother, I truly detested her. Although she had more knowledge than my father and although many of the truths of life were imparted to me by her, standing in front of my father's hospital bed, I still felt that she was petty and detestable.

For more than 20 years, if she had been able to share some of the family burden for my father, perhaps he would not have fallen ill with such a disease.

Three months before his death, my father requested to go home. Despite my opposition, my mother helped my father back. Incredibly, the first thing my father did after coming home was to tie on his apron and head to the kitchen.

No matter how I shouted and tried to stop him, my father still insisted on cooking, and my mother remained silent, leaning against the kitchen door and watching my father cook for her.

I was so anxious that I almost burst into tears and shouted at my mother: "Dad has cooked for you all his life. Can't you forgive him in front of your son and cook a meal yourself this time?" But neither my mother nor my father responded to me. The old couple was just like in the past decades, one idle and one cooking, which broke my heart.

Five days later, my mother and I took my father back to the ward with his abdomen swollen. While my father was in the hospital, my elderly grandmother did all the cooking, I washed all the clothes, and my mother sat by my father's bed all day, doing only one thing, that is, reading to my father a book she had written.

I once heard my mother say to my father, "My dear, you never read my books before, but now that you are ill, just lie down and listen to me read to you, for you and I are in this book."

When he was dying, my father called me to his hospital bed. There were no tears, only one sentence left for me: "After graduation, come back to Chongqing to live with your mother and cook for her." And to my mother, he left only one sentence: "My dear, I'm leaving and can't cook for you anymore." For this sentence, my mother cried for a whole week, weeping without eating or drinking. No one could persuade her, and she repeatedly said only one sentence: "You said you would cook for me for a lifetime, but you broke your promise."

After graduating from college, I followed my father's wish and returned to Chongqing to live with my mother. Then I gradually discovered that my mother had always been so dependent on my father, not only in life but also in spirit. In my mother's heart, my father never left.

I am busy with work and don't have much time to cook for my retired mother. One day, when I entered the house, I saw my mother cooking in the kitchen. Tears hung on her cheeks as she clumsily sliced potatoes. I suddenly thought of my father's last words, and tears began to well up in my eyes.

Six years after my father's death, my mother finally could not bear the loneliness and followed him. Before she died, my mother said to me, "Burn all my books along with your father's portrait and let him go with me."

The night my mother died, I read the last book my mother published in tears. Like my father, I almost never read the books written by my mother, and until this time, I finally understood that my mother loved my father so deeply, but she expressed her love in a different way.

In fact, my mother's life was long intertwined with my father's. Unequal love also holds the same touching truth!