Parental Love

Parental Love

Author: Lai Qingzhen08/14/2022 Love Story

My mother was a "weaver", she was always present whenever there was a weaving activity in the village, and she was also a good singer of mountain songs, she often sang with the aunts and uncles of the village's mountain song team until late at night ...... but my father was not a "cowherd boy". "I can't imagine how their love began thirty years ago when the Buyi whistle was prevalent. How did the father capture the mother's heart?

The fact is that there are too many words that describe the various encounters and beginnings of love throughout the ages. I can't remember when I started to think about my parents' love.

According to my grandmother, my parents met on their own, not through a matchmaker. That's what happened in "Roman Holiday": "Nice to meet you, how are you tonight?" This opening of Princess Anne's confusion?

"Dad, how did you get involved with my mom back then?" The young me is simply the embodiment of "100,000 reasons", unexplained curiosity, prompted me to often pester my father to ask.

"Ha ha ha ...... ask your mother." A big man's face, the first time hard to hide the shyness.

"Mom, you tell me," I begged unrelentingly.

"Ha ha ha, hey hey hey...hehe...ouch, the little doll asked this to get what kind of well." The mother's mouth reluctantly, but the corners of her eyes have long been full of smiles, but still keep their mouths shut.

So many times back and forth, softening, the father was willing to relent: "I think back then, I'm one-meter eighty-three, right, just stand anywhere, is beautiful scenery, ha ha ha! He joked one after another, very smug. The father often joked about his mother, who was less than one meter five meters tall, and this was his daily joke, even though his mother was a production team leader who carried a red tassel gun back then, but as a father with no position, his mouth was not shy to make up the appearance of his mother carrying a long tassel gun and dragging the ground due to her lack of height back then.

"Old earth temple, what a joke, don't look at yourself in the mirror." The mother, who was small but pretty, argued her case, but the tenderness between her eyes slipped towards her father.

To this day, I still haven't gotten a definite answer. As the years have added up, in the process of companionship in the past, now it seems to have found some clues.

The love of people in the 1970s and 1980s was not like now, and the ingredients of their love were more of a simple and beautiful companionship: "The grass is bearing its seeds, the wind is shaking its leaves, and we are standing, not talking, and it is very beautiful".

The parents met each other in 1984, after their first years of life, and in 1985, they formed a family. At that time, my father was a carpenter and often went out to earn a living, coming home only on Thursdays, Sundays, or holidays. My mother was responsible for the living of the five children and all the farm work. During the long years, every time my father came back from a trip, my mother would prepare a change of clothes in advance for his next trip. A few of us small ones are looking forward to my father's arrival because as long as my father came home, he would always find a way to bring back spicy fried small river fish, stewed pig's feet, fried pig's liver, dry-fried large intestine for our little gluttonous cats to feast on Thursday market day. At that time, my mother was not used to eating animal offal and fish, my father always had a new trick to fry them until there was no fishy smell, when eating, with all kinds of praise: "yo yo yo, this is great, the treatment of the international hotel level, delicious to the ears to fall off! The side of the praise while adding gluttonous swallowing sound, "child his mother, you also try a piece." Then, he sent it to his mother's bowl without saying a word. Or maybe my father finished eating before us and started to make some disgusting jokes: "Yoho, this morning, I don't know which guy put the green slug hanging on the foot of the wall" "Hey, the day before yesterday, when picking manure fertilizer, splashed on the trouser legs, the yellow old can not wash off". ...... then we "clang clang clang" eat wildly, hurry to end the meal, then my father will be mother beaten, and constantly wailing. At first, the mother is still reluctant to try, gradually, to eat some fish and pork sausage. Every time my mother ate a piece, my father would smile triumphantly like an elementary school student who had won the "three good" student award.

In 1986, my mother's first child was a daughter, but she died seven months later, and the next three children were all daughters. So in my young memory, my grandmother often took advantage of my father to go out to earn a living and instigated my mother to take the second or third sister to exchange with three sons but no daughter cousin's family, until my father knew about this from others, sternly refused to "their daughters, their support, other family's gold and silver treasure are not exchanged", the matter was put to rest. It is not easy to live in the wind and tears of the parents, to not fear people's words and laughter. Later, there are four brothers and five brothers, but the father still loves his daughter, I remember my mother mentioned something: when I was a child, I was a very sticky father, once he glared at eight months old me, I was scared to high fever, from then on no longer angry with children. Later, just learned to walk, I am more pestering, every time my father went out, have gone over several hills, and heard my cries, he could not bear to come back, simply take me with him to help people play with furniture. My mother said that when I was young, I had to drag my father's ears with one hand and rub his chin and beard with the other before I would fall asleep.

In those difficult years, my mother gradually became incessant, but my father has always been a very firm gentleman, no matter how hard it was, he never wavered from the idea of sending his children to college, even if they had not bought new clothes for many years, even if they had been living in a house supported by a single beam only thigh thick, even if the house had no dry land to stand on when it rained, even if the most valuable thing in the house was my mother The most different thing about him and his mother is that he never complained about life, probably in his heart, but his mouth never said, I have never heard him say a rude word in my life, at most, "If anyone can not hold on, I will go to credit back to a cow Let's raise the cattle to plow the only three cents of land."

My basic education came from my father. In the early rural society, the education of children generally fell on the mother, because there were many children, and the father had no spare capacity to educate the children just to support the family. I was lucky that my father would tell us stories from time to time: when we were too tired to work in the hills and fields, he would tell us how difficult it was for the Red Army's 25,000-mile long march and recite Chairman Mao's quotations to us in the fields with my mother; when the power was too boring after a rainy night, he would tell us about the hard work and infatuation of the Conch Girl, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden; whenever we complained that studying was too hard, he would tell us how he and my mother could not study because of the times. Whenever we complained that studying was too hard, he would tell the story of how he and his mother could not study because of the times. ...... When my father told the story, my mother would listen to it with us, echoing, sometimes adding, sometimes refuting, and even if it was an argument, the look in her eyes was joyful and exciting.

After 2000, the five of us gradually left our parents to go to school, junior high school, high school, and then graduated from college and joined the workforce, and gradually became the home of more faraway people, only mother waiting for her children and loved ones to return home, every time we received a phone call that we will return home, mother's words flowed like waiting for the triumphant general; gradually we five undergraduate graduates to work, father also due to We all graduated from undergraduate school and joined the workforce, and my father became white and sick early due to years of hard work.

In May 2013, when I took my father to Ji'an Hospital for herpes treatment, the doctors and nurses mistook him for my grandfather, and my mother still couldn't hide her heartache every time she thought about it. At that time, I always felt that time would eventually be kind to this pair of bitter lovebirds, as long as "the green hills strictly exist, when the green water drunk at his feet, we just hug each other, we know that we will meet again."

In the past, whenever my mother went out and could not come home on the same day, my father had to question us about my mother's situation. Later, when we took my father on trips to seek medical treatment, my mother called every few hours to ask, "Where are you?" "Where are you staying?" "Did you get the medicine?" "Has your father eaten yet?" "It's not cold there, is it?" "When will you be back?" ......

It was clear that they had each other's numbers in the phone book, but they didn't call each other directly but had to go to us children for transit.

The fact is that you can find a lot of people who are not able to get a good deal on a lot of things. The father was only obedient to the pain and drank all the medicine that was brought up.

But things didn't go as planned, and in June 2015, in just six months, my father's weight dropped sharply from the initial 160 pounds to less than 90 pounds. The first thing I did that night was to apologize to my mother, "Mom, I've been a family member for thirty years, and I've only been sorry for you three times, so you've been wronged. Then one by one, counting the things, there is one thing mother crossed out because she was not angry, and then he said goodbye to our siblings in turn, each more word is like running a marathon as exhausted, on a few things, the father said a whole four hours. Mother told him to rest for a while and wait for the fifth to return before leaving, but he left at dawn.

After my father left, my mother became bold, before the mention of the car will be dizzy, never daring to go out alone, but asked to travel, in her words, "I am to fulfill your father's last wish, it is impossible to get seasick."

Once I teased my mother, "When you and your father were having such a hard time, did you not think of leaving home?"

"Ohhh, silly girl."

"Why? In case you find a better family, we might be able to follow you and suffer less."

"Your father loves to play poker, and every time he wins money, he is silent; when he loses money or lends money to someone and can't get it back, he comes home happy." My mother looked like I already knew the truth, which was very cute.

Qian Zhongshu said in "The Siege", "Old people falling in love is like an old house on fire, there is no way to save it". There were no diamond roses in someone's love, but in the thirty years they walked side by side, even though they were poor, they could still smile slightly, and when they looked down, they had walked dozens of miles. Admittedly, there were no romantic expressions in their love, nor were there any lovemaking in front of the moon, but "between my father and mother, there was less selfishness of love and more purity of affection. They do not regret their union, they do not regret their dislike, they do not abandon it, they do not say anything about their love."