Chapter 28 third quarter

Maizi was born in Ping'an County, surrounded by the Qilian Mountains. She lived in the county until she was seven years old.In her memory, there was a beautiful garden in the small county town, with locust trees, apricot trees, winter jasmine and thorn roses planted in it, and a tall and deep house, which was the home of her and her mother. Wheat's memory of his hometown first comes from the fragrance of green leaves and flowers in the courtyard.Thorny roses and Chinese roses grow next to the fence, clump after clump, with luxuriant branches and leaves. From early summer to late autumn, they bloom sequentially for half a year, and star-like flowers are dotted among the green leaves.The blooming thorn roses are gorgeous rose red. The rose has three colors, dark red, light pink and light yellow. The delicate stamens tremble in the breeze, and the whole garden is filled with rich fragrance.But every time when rose thorns and Chinese roses bloom, some buds are not fully bloomed, so my mother cuts them off and hangs them in the sun.In the days to come, my mother made tea with dried flower buds——when the elegant and quiet mother picked flower buds in the yard or stared at the colorful fallen flowers in the water with a transparent glass, it was the romance that would never fade in this gray western town .

There are many materials used by my mother to make scented tea. In addition to thorn rose and Chinese rose, the most commonly used ones are apricot flower and marigold.Therefore, in the garden, pink, red, and yellow flower buds are often dried in summer and autumn, and the mother who drinks scented tea all the year round always exudes a faint fragrance.The fragrance of mother's body always floats in Maizi's mind like a dream.Many years later, Maizi read a martial arts novel called "Xiangxiang", in which the description of Princess Xiangxiang resonated with her, and she often recalled her mother who lived in her hometown.Maizi has every reason to believe that there have been such strange women as Princess Xiangxiang in the world, just like her mother, she or they have never disappeared from this turbid real world, which makes the adult Maizi somewhat ashamed...

In fact, the mother who likes to drink scented tea is a woman who cherishes flowers very much. Most of the scented teas she dries are not picked, but those that are blown down by the wind.Especially the apricot flowers, she never went to the trees to pick them, and those flowers walked according to their own life course. Every year at the end of spring, the flowers withered, and the apricot trees were full of fruits.In summer, the yellow apricots bend the branches, bringing infinite sweetness to the wheat.Facing the sweet fruit of a tree, Maizi thinks that it is an extra rich gift from her monotonous childhood life from her mother who prefers scented tea but does not pick apricot blossoms. For this, she is always grateful to her mother in her heart.

In addition to flowers, there are trees in the garden.The most eye-catching are several tall locust trees, which can give people a sense of peace and stability.Every year from mid-spring to late autumn, the locust tree casts a deep shade on the courtyard, bringing Maizi and his mother unspeakable tranquility and support. When my mother is not at work, if the weather is fine, she will sit in the yard and read a book under the shade of a tree.My mother is the administrator of the county cultural center, and she can conveniently borrow books home to read. There is always a stack of books on the three-drawer table at home, with the official seal of the cultural center on the cover,,, and,, and so on.Maizi, who has just started to read and write, occasionally sits beside her mother and reads in a dignified manner, but she can't understand those big tomes. She only reads comic books, which are bought or borrowed by her mother.At that time, Maizi read the most adapted comic strips, such as "The Monkey King" and "Three Beats of the Bone Demon".

Maizi sometimes goes outside to play in the yard.She went around the fence and came to the alley behind the yard. Several children were jumping on rubber bands, throwing sandbags or jumping on the grid, and she joined them stiffly.This kind of blunt joining cannot make Maizi get along well with other children. For example, if other children want to play a scoundrel during the game, Maizi not only will not play a scoundrel, but also will not see others play a scoundrel. Disputes always happen inevitably.Those children imitated the women on the street and scolded each other, and the cursing words were all buzzwords at that time.Maizi doesn't know how to swear, she doesn't know how to retaliate against them, and she seems indifferent to the catchphrases they throw at her.And this kind of indifference, in the eyes of the scolding children, is her contempt and dissatisfaction with them, which undoubtedly further angered them. They are contemptuous and unconvinced.After a while, the older child suddenly remembered something, whispered something to the children around him, and then spit at Maizi: "Bah, bah, you are a wild child that no one wants!"

"You're an unwanted wild child!" repeated all the children gloatingly.At this time, Maizi could no longer be indifferent, and she left them crying. The young Maizi understands that being a "wild child" is a very bad thing. Specifically, a wild child has become a synonym for illegitimate children who don't know who their father is.Maizi has never met his father, but he doesn't understand why he has no father and why he has become a "wild child".However, she didn't dare to tell her mother about the quarrel with others, so she had to let go of her doubts, but her little heart missed her father whom she had never met.

Missing his father is a secret hidden in Maizi's heart.Especially when others call her a "wild child", this kind of miss becomes intense and boundless.In the boundless miss, she gave her father various image assumptions: noble, elegant, knowledgeable, also with the fragrance of locust tree or thorn rose.The father treasured it in Maizi's heart like this, which made her immature heart feel a strong warmth.With guesses and assumptions about her father, Maizi seems to have found support. She is no longer afraid of being called a "wild child" by others, but she just doesn't bother to quarrel with those people.This "disdain" pushed away all the helplessness, loneliness and troubles above Maizi's head.

After that, Maizi seldom went to the street to play, and she began to slowly look through the tomes borrowed by her mother.Although she still couldn't understand, she got to know Hugo and Balzac, Xiao Hong and Zhang Ailing from the book, and knew many lives and lives that were completely different from the counties she was familiar with. For Maizi who has no playmates, sitting in the shade of a tree in the yard and reading is a happy thing in sunny weather.But Maizi likes winter more, thinking of winter is like thinking of her father, and there is a warm feeling in her heart. In winter, the flowers and trees in the yard are withered, and the eyes are gray and desolate.At this time, Maizi and her mother stayed in the house, cooking around a small charcoal stove.The mother sitting by the stove is always busy, knitting sweaters, hats, scarves, and wool socks for wheat.Red, green, yellow, white, black, gray, colorful thread balls are like juggling in the hands of mothers. In a few days, they are woven into a piece of clothing. Colorful patterns, some embroidered with animal cartoons, each sweater is beautiful and delicate.The woolen socks woven by my mother are warm and comfortable, and the cuffs of the socks are also embroidered with colorful flowers or woven a circle of lace with a crochet hook.The mother sitting by the stove sometimes does other things, such as cooking red dates or soybeans on the stove in a small aluminum pot, adding white sugar when cooking the red dates, boiling the water dry, and turning them into delicious candied dates ; Sprinkle salt and five-spice powder when cooking soybeans, and then put the cooked soybeans on the stove to dry, and it becomes a delicious snack.Every morning, my mother has another important thing to do, which is to comb Maizi’s hair in different ways, sometimes in a high ponytail on the top of her head, with a red or blue ribbon tied into a bow at the root of her hair; She wears a single braid at the back with a plastic barrette at the end; she sometimes twists her hair into a bun with a string of shiny glass beads hanging from it.

Many years later, when winter comes, accompanied by the rustling of falling snowflakes, Maizi can't help but miss his hometown and the winter in his hometown, miss the warm feeling of sitting around the fire with his mother, or miss the never-before-seen face father. In Maizi's subconscious mind, his father should also belong to his hometown.