Chapter 7 mother's hand

In terms of inner feelings, I once had a brief but sharp conflict with my mother. It was a one-sided bitterness that had been buried deep in my heart.I never confided in my mother while she was alive.Until writing this article, I have not told other people closest to me. mother's magnetism In February 1988, I was invited to Hong Kong to participate in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of "Ta Kung Pao".During the period, I visited a well-known fortune teller in Hong Kong, and we became friends as literary friends.Not only does he love literature, but he has also published literary treatises. Of course, his job is fortune-telling and geomantic omen.It is said that several celebrities in the political and business circles at home and abroad have asked him to see him.He also shows ordinary people, but they need to make appointments long in advance.I went to Hong Kong to find him the other year, and he was hosting an ordinary couple who came to have their two-year-old child photographed, and their appointment was almost three years ago-the mother of the child was just pregnant Time.

When we met in 1988, he not only calculated the general trend of the second half of my life for me, but also listed the fleeting fortune for me, which is not accurate to the month in the past five years.At least so far, his prophecies have come true one by one.Not to mention it, what made my heart sway the most after hearing it was his solemn statement: "In your life, you often don't even realize it yourself. You are shrouded in the strong and invisible shadow of your mother." Relatively speaking, your father has little influence on you." Is he appropriating Freud's "Oedipus complex" (the so-called "Oedipus complex")? This A fortune teller friend, his numerology resources are a combination of Chinese and Western. Let me just tell you that the language he speaks most fluently is French besides Cantonese, followed by English. The study room is full of philosophy books, including those in foreign languages. , you can know that he is not an ordinary "Warlock of the Rivers and Lakes".Therefore, when he said this to me, he obviously did not simply apply Freud's theory.He really hit the nail on the head, and my heart trembled loudly: Yes.Maybe I'm not so willing, but whenever I'm at a juncture in life and have to make an important decision, my mother's "magnetic field" strongly acts on me, and I can't help but take a step forward.

mother's love I lived with my mother throughout my childhood and adolescence, but that was only "so far".When I read "The Person Who Loved Me the Most in the World" written by Zhang Jie after her mother passed away, I felt a feeling similar to jealousy and melancholy.No matter how many hardships and hardships there are, no matter how much love and resentment can arise between each other, they finally depend on each other for life. One is gone, and the other is in this world. A whole thick book is used to set up a monument for her.Those who go to the earth will know, what joy it should be!

And when I lived with my mother, because I had my father, my brothers and sisters, they all loved me very much, so when I was in a daze, I often didn't pay special attention to enjoying maternal love. Perhaps it was my mother who "loved me the most" , but I don't have the word "most" in my heart.  In 1942, during the most difficult years of the Anti-Japanese War, my mother gave birth to me in Yuyingtang Street, Chengdu, Sichuan.At that time my father was in Chongqing, because the Japanese planes often bombed Chongqing, so soon after my mother gave birth to me, according to my father’s letter, she took my brothers and sisters back to the remote hometown—Anyue County—to “flee.” It was not until the victory of the Anti-Japanese War that my father took my mother and us back to live in Chongqing.

The foggy city of Chongqing formed a vague and romantic silhouette in my childhood memory.What I remember vividly and profoundly from my childhood and teenage years is life in Beijing.From 1950 to 1959, I was 8 to 17 years old.At that time, my father was working in a state agency in Beijing. He went to the countryside to participate in the land reform for a year, and later he traveled frequently. The older sisters are already out of town, or they have left home to live independently one after another. At home, my mother and I are usually the two.  Looking back on those ten years of life, my mother's material and spiritual upbringing for me were extraordinary. 

Materially, my mother doesn't pay much attention to clothing, and it's the same for me. Anyway, I have something to wear, so it won't be too bad, and it's fine if I don't freeze in winter.Compared with the leaders, the things used, such as furniture, are too crude.But when it comes to eating, it’s no small matter. My mother can cook very authentic Sichuan dishes, not to mention that she can make a table of banquets by herself, which makes my father’s friends—all those who have seen the world and eaten. The high-end banquet person--the praise is her non-stop rotation on weekdays making Sichuan sausage, bacon, stewed pork, kimchi, tempeh, lai soup yuan, meat dumplings, preserved eggs, salted eggs, fermented glutinous rice, pork floss, boiled chicken, camphor Tea duck, braised pork, rice noodle meat... etc. "standing dishes", the color, aroma and taste are also impeccable, absolutely mouth-watering.And during those ten years, what I ate every day were delicacies made by my mother.My mother always asked me to "hey up and eat" (Sichuan dialect, which means to eat as much as I want).My father's unit is far away, so I can't come back to eat at noon, and I don't always come back to eat at night, so my mother usually makes delicious food for me in and out of the kitchen.Someone who understands the situation in my family has warned me a long time ago: "You will leave home in the future, let's see how you get used to eating!" But I was ignorant at that time, and I never imagined the "future" .Maybe life can continue like that? "Mom! I want to eat watercress fish! I want to drink bacon and watercress sauerkraut soup!" So, when I sit at the dinner table, I will inevitably have these two delicious dishes that are "just home-cooked dishes" ...At that time, I felt in a trance that this was a matter of course for me.Incidentally, corresponding to this, my mother hardly bought me candy and other snacks, and she was very reluctant to give me money to buy snacks myself.Occasionally, she saw me eating snacks such as Guodan peel, Hongguotiao, Kanto candy, etc. Although she would not confiscate them, she always wanted to scold me.My mother firmly believes that as long as a person eats three decent meals, he can live a long and healthy life, and what he said seems to convey the belief that only by eating "serious meals" can a person behave righteously, and eating snacks means morality It began to slip - of course, it will be many years later that I can organize what I have realized into such sentences. My mother surprised my neighbors by "feeding" me like this, and was unanimously accused of "spoiling" and "doting" me.But then there was something that surprised the neighbors.At that time, we lived in an office compound in an alley in Dongcheng, Beijing. The smell from my kitchen, and the fact that my mother often dried homemade sausages outside the kitchen, etc., were of course easy to attract people's attention, but the mail from each family In particular, the newspapers and periodicals you order need to pass through the reception room. If you become a big mail account, it will be even more difficult to escape people's attention and discussion.To the great surprise of the neighbors, my family subscribed the most newspapers and periodicals—of course it would not be surprising if my father subscribed to them all, but my father actually only subscribed to "People's Daily", and the rest actually subscribed. I ordered them all.When I was in elementary school and junior high school, it was "Childhood", "Youth Literature and Art", "Pictorial", "New Youth Daily", "Middle School Students", "Knowledge is Power"... When I was in high school, it was "Literary Learning", "People's Literature", "Literary News", "New Observation", "Translation", "Popular Movies", "Drama News"...even with "Reading".Such a large number of newspapers and periodicals cost a lot of money. A neighbor aunt asked my mother in puzzlement: "Why are you so willing to spend so much money on a son? Look at you, you are dressed in such shabby clothes. I don’t even buy sofas and chairs at home!” My mother replied calmly: “He likes it! Let’s use up this hobby!” In fact, the neighbors only noticed the investment in subscription newspapers and magazines. How did they know that my mother was providing for my The investment in buying extracurricular reading materials, as well as the investment in watching movies and dramas after I went to high school, is an astonishing figure.From 1955 to 1959, I probably never let go of any imported dubbed films at that time, as well as the original Soviet films (such as "Yan Nan Flying", "The Fourth "Eleventh" is where I saw it all).And because my home is not far from the Capital Theatre, I watched almost every play performed by the Beijing People's Art Institute.Why should I count all the investment in this area on my mother? Because although all the money in my family came from the wages earned by my father (he was an administrative 12th grader at the time, the salary was considered high), but the money was all controlled by my mother.My father was so busy with his work and he had his own world that he hardly bothered me.My mother takes care of all my affairs.Therefore, if my mother hadn't "indulged" and "indulged" my literary hobbies like meals, how could I have absorbed so much (of course quite messy) cultural nourishment back then?

Under my mother's upbringing, my body matured quickly, and my mentality quickly expanded—I like literature, but I don't think I am just a "literary youth", I should only try to give newspapers and periodicals When submitting essays for columns such as "Xinmiao", I pretended to be an adult author and sent manuscripts to some very high-end newspapers and magazines indiscriminately.Needless to say, there were a lot of rejected manuscripts as a matter of course, but finally in 1958, when I was 16 years old and in my second year of high school, I published my first article in "Dhushu" magazine - "Talking about "Forty one>". 

To me, that's certainly an important thing.As far as my mother is concerned, isn't she ecstatic that "a soldier can be raised for a thousand days and a soldier can be used for a short time"? No, my mother may be happy too, but the level of joy does not seem to exceed the usual things like seeing me get a good grade in school.  His mother died of illness in Chengdu in 1988.She left behind a pile of diaries, 1958 is a single, thick one, almost every day without interruption, it is full of many trivial details of my family.I searched and searched, and the fact that my article was printed in type for the first time was a "big deal" to me, but she just didn't mention it. 

My mother is an extremely ordinary mother, but there are many intriguing things in her ordinaryness.  After a long time, I couldn't really understand her love for me.  different kind of love In 1959, I failed the college entrance examination.It was later confirmed that it was not because I failed the exam, but because of another reason, which included a rather complicated story, which I will not talk about here.I was admitted to Beijing Teachers College, and I reluctantly registered. My "lucky luck" is that this school is in the city, so I think I can still generally maintain the same lifestyle as in high school-go home to eat and sleep at night.Although the school requires students to live on campus, and teachers’ colleges don’t charge for meals, there are also some students there who are not so particular about progress and whose families are not so difficult. They go home almost every day, give up school meals, and live with me This is the case with a classmate in the class. 

I fully thought that my mother would indulge me to live like that "as usual".But she provided me with a bedroll and a suitcase, showing that she never hesitated, and never imagined that I would cheat—she made it clear that I should go to the boarding house, and told me not to come home until Saturday.I obeyed, but my heart was very awkward.  At that time, after experiencing the exaggerated "Great Leap Forward", the country entered a "three-year difficult period". The food in the school can be imagined, and there is a shortage of oil and water.Although my mother has gradually become "a clever woman can't cook without rice", my father still has some special supplies such as cooking oil and soybeans depending on his rank, and my mother can often "turn decay into magic", such as the fish discarded by northerners. Heads and pig intestines are made into unexpectedly delicious food, so when I return home on Sunday, the meal is still delicious, so when I go back to the school cafeteria, I will feel even more hungry. 

Not only did my mother "push" me to school, but she no longer paid for the subscription fees for those newspapers and periodicals for me. I could only make full use of the school's reading room and library.Although it was only a junior college, in all fairness, the general collection of books was quite rich, so it gradually attracted me. After a few months, I got used to spending time in the library, and did not go home on weekends. , There have been a few times when I spent a whole day in the library on Sunday.  However, the pocket money my mother gave me every month was still more among my classmates than what they gave me at home.So at that time, I seemed to be quite rich among my classmates. Sometimes I would buy some Iraqi candied dates (there were only a few kinds of food with variable supply in the market at that time), and treat my classmates to eat.  In the spring of 1960, I came home one Saturday, and as soon as I entered the door, I found something unusual, as if I was preparing to move... Sure enough, my father was ordered to be transferred to a military academy in Zhangjiakou to teach, and my mother followed him.What about me? My father and mother didn't hesitate to think that I should stay in Beijing.Of course, I don't think I should go with them. After all, I'm already a college student. The question is: should I keep my home in Beijing, specifically, our dormitory? Too many, so why not save at least one room for me? That year, my father and his agency were ordered to transfer several other people to Zhangjiakou. Some of them went by themselves without their wives. Of course, they kept their houses in Beijing.Many years later, they also experienced the turmoil of the "Cultural Revolution", but in the end, they have roots in Beijing, and after all, "leaves return to their roots".At that time, even though my mother went to Zhangjiakou with my father, and the organization asked me to reserve a room for me, it would be granted, but my father returned all the rooms. My mother's thoughts and feelings were exactly the same as my father's, that is, Think that in this case, I should start a completely independent life.  In my family, my mother was the absolute authority on my issues.If my mother suggested that I should reserve the room, my father would not object.My mother's behavior also puzzled the neighbors, especially, they had all witnessed my mother's doting on me in terms of meals and newspaper subscriptions. I am in "a place where there is no cone", can this still be regarded as a loving mother?! On the day my parents moved from Beijing to Zhangjiakou, I didn’t go to see them off because it wasn’t Sunday, and I obediently listened to the class in the classroom.On the Saturday afternoon of that week, I suddenly realized that I had no place to call home in Beijing except for the upper bunk in the dormitory! I climbed up, lay down on the bunk, and stared blankly at Looking at a stain on the ceiling, she didn't shed tears, but there was a pain that penetrated her heart, which was hard to say and no one to complain to.  I was not yet 18 that day.  I think someone will laugh at me: How strange is it to start an independent life at the age of seventeen or eighteen! In the years before 1949, some people participated in the revolution at the age of 15! And during the "Cultural Revolution", how many young people Going to the mountains and going to the countryside, the youngest group of the "old three" ("old junior one"), they were at most 16 years old when they went to jump the queue or go to the Corps.Yes, I have also reviewed my cowardice and humbleness in my heart, so I have never dared to reveal my heart song at that stage.But now the times have changed, and I am over half a century old. The life training that I am fully responsible for myself can also be said to be rich in lessons and experience, so I can calmly jump out of myself and observe and analyze me from a teenager to a youth. In the process of psychological maturity in one stage of life, now I can better understand the precious love that parents, especially mother, have for their children, especially for me.  Everyone will have their own unique life experience, but the life course of most people can often be classified in general.In the years before 1949, many young people participated in the revolution, either because their families were too poor to eat, or because their families were well-to-do or rich, but they felt suffocated, so they took the initiative to join the revolution and left home.However, most intellectual youths in the "Cultural Revolution" left their homes and went to the countryside. They were in a state of being positive, negative or chaotic, and they had to go with the wind.However, in a relatively well-off family with strong family ties, and in a relatively peaceful stage of social development, it is easy for parents to spoil and spoil their children while ignoring the ability to cultivate them to live independently. Even when it's time to "let them fly", they can't resolutely let them out of the house, let them spread their wings, and start a relatively independent life journey. Since the 1980s, many small families have faced such a seemingly simple, but not so simple problem in reality. As a result, there have been many young people with mental retardation, which has caused more and more problems in the society. A number of ethical issues, moral issues, social ecological balance issues, and a series of issues such as the evolution of national quality that have negative impacts.It was in such a new humanistic environment that I suddenly felt that deepening my understanding of some aspects of my mother from such a new perspective would bring new insights not only to myself but also to my son. The inspiration of the book, and writing it out, may be of reference value to today's mothers.  Mother set us free In fact, I have also written about my mother in many articles, but I did not write a book like Zhang Jie did.I have recalled my mother's kindness, her generosity, her honesty that I recalled as being too much, and how slow she was always to move because of her weight, and her love for characters and characters. The details are so precious that she has been keeping a diary for decades.She once ended her family’s visit to the Summer Palace with this sentence in a diary: “When I came back, all the lights were on!” At the age of 11), he experienced an emotional and poetic baptism... However, in my memories of my mother, it is impossible to have a sigh of being dependent on each other and living hand in hand. It is not because the family is poor and hard to support. Because of the general social situation, I had to "break the umbilical cord" with my parents (although the string of class struggle was getting tighter and tighter at that time, but it didn't affect me, at least it was "properly relying on my parents", for example, I hoped that my parents would leave Beijing. I "saved the house" for me), but because my parents agreed, especially my mother's "no hesitation", I wanted me to flap my wings and fly to the society after I was 18 years old. Support until you build your own nest, marry a wife and have children, and create another world of your own.  This is how parents treat each of our children.My elder brother left home to join the People’s Liberation Army before 1949. My second elder brother left home to study papermaking when he was sixteen or seventeen. In 1950, he was assigned to work as a technician in a paper factory in a village in Yanbian. Work locally, so does my sister.In short, we were all resolutely released by our parents before the age of 20. In the years that followed, we all went back to our parents' homes to visit them during the holidays, and they also visited our respective places later.Our kinship will not diminish in the slightest due to social turmoil and changes in the world.Parents always give us not only emotional support, but also material support when we encounter difficulties after being released.For example, after I had a son in 1971, although my parents were improperly resettled to live in a remote hometown due to the disbandment of the military academy, not only did they not want me to send them money from Beijing, but they went from there to me in Beijing on time every month. Sending 15 yuan to subsidize our life, each remittance slip is written in mother's handwriting, can you say that she is only for "raising grandchildren", but she does not have strong maternal love for me?  But parents, especially mothers, are amazingly firm in the point of "children grow up and fly separately".My younger brother, who used to teach in a rural middle school in the south, suddenly received a telegram saying that he had tuberculosis.At that time, my father was away on a business trip, and my mother, who had always been slow, took the train to him the next day, took him back to Beijing for treatment, and tried my best to make him recover.During that period, my elder brother’s household registration had been moved back to Beijing. After recovering from illness, he found a job in Beijing. It was not too difficult to stay at home, but my mother was like a mother swallow who licked Xiaoyan’s wounds. The injury is healed, and there is still no discussion about letting go, and he never thinks about keeping his brother by his side.Later, my brother returned to that remote rural middle school with very difficult conditions. Some neighbors thought it was incredible, but my mother felt at ease.  Mothers can leave their children, but they cannot leave their fathers. Except during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, when mothers separated from their fathers due to "fleeing refugees", the two of them stayed together throughout their long lives. In 1960, my father was transferred to Zhangjiakou, which was "outside the mouth", and the hardships can be imagined.Some people advised my mother to stay in Beijing. The policy may not be against it. Besides, my father will retire in a few years, so he can return to his family in Beijing. What's more, there is me in Beijing, who graduated from a teacher's college and is assigned in Beijing. It happens that mother and son depend on each other. Didn't cover everything? My mother never wavered for a minute. As soon as she heard the transfer order, she started to pack up the family belongings and went to the outside of the Great Wall with her father, where she experienced the baptism of the "Cultural Revolution".During this period, all the teachers of the military academy were transferred to the Hubei Cadre Academy, and some family members who accompanied the army proposed that they had independent household registration and were not staff members of the military academy. They wanted to stay and settle down. In this way, when the military academy was completely "smashed", some faculty and staff were able to return to their family members who had not been sent down, and their living conditions were relatively improved.But my mother never thought about it as usual, and she never hesitated for a minute. She calmly followed her father into the "stuffy car", sat on the ground all the way, and was transported to the Hubei Cadre School... For my mother, husband and wife are important If it cannot be separated automatically, no matter what the situation is, and no matter whether even a short separation may bring some future "benefits", she will never consider it.It really doesn't matter whether it is a flowery path or a mountain of swords and fires, as long as she is alive, she will walk hand in hand with her father, in every possible day and night.Is this the feudal idea of ​​"marry your husband and follow your husband"? Is this "the bourgeoisie's love is paramount"? Perhaps, this is a kind of beautiful instinct like the old swallow and the old swallow flying together? Combining the mother's absolute inseparability from her father and her absolute freedom of adult children, I now realize that such a mother is indeed very difficult.Or, to put it another way: This is the most common kind of mother, but, at least in the social environment we are in now, it is not so common.With my "political sense", until the spring of 1966, I still never expected that a stormy "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" was imminent. I was teaching in a middle school in Beijing. I was less than 24 years old at the time, but I had nearly five years of teaching experience. Teaching is quite easy for me A sense of familiarity.Middle school was a small world, far away from the center of the political vortex at that time. Apart from teaching, I just sat in the school dormitory and read, wrote some small articles and sent them to newspaper supplements to earn a small manuscript fee. Stroll around the park, etc.As soon as Yao Wenyuan's article criticizing "Hai Rui Dismissed from Office" was published in Shanghai's "Wen Wei Po", I read it in the reading room of the school. I was a little surprised, but it was only "a little bit". I have no interest in it, and no one thought that the article was the beginning of a catastrophe that involved all of us.The small articles I contributed to the "Beijing Evening News" were sometimes printed next to the "Yanshan Evening Chat" in the supplement, but I neither felt flattered nor had any ominous omens. "When asked me why I "sang together" with "Yanshan Evening Talk", I lost my voice... In that spring, the quilt cover of my quilt was rotten. It was the quilt that my mother sewed for me when she let me fly.After serving me faithfully for several years, it finally reached the point where it had to be replaced.So I wrote to my mother in Zhangjiakou asking for a quilt cover.This was extremely natural for me: at that time, although I had already earned a salary of 54 yuan a month, and occasionally had a manuscript fee of five or ten yuan, I lived alone, and it was not difficult financially at all. Sending ten or twenty yuan to the mother shows filial piety.It's not that I can't afford a new quilt cover, but I don't know where to get a ready-made quilt cover, or white cloth to sew.That's hard for me to think about. Of course, I have to ask my mother for this kind of thing.  My mother quickly sent me a package, which contained a new quilt cover that she sewed for me, but at the same time I also received a letter from my mother. There were a few words in her letter that made me feel very poignant: " ...I still asked for the quilt cover, okay, this time I will learn from Lei Feng and do good deeds, and I will send you a bed..." This is what I said at the beginning of the article. I had an inner emotional conflict with my mother. I slept in a new quilt cover sent by my mother. I felt a sense of sadness. How could a mother send her son a quilt cover? , do good deeds", as if it is "voluntary labor"?! Of course, in those years, this was a very trivial and trivial matter, not to mention that it soon entered the "Cultural Revolution" period, and the displeasure with my mother soon sank into the bottom of my heart and became dusty. up.  After the "Cultural Revolution", due to accidental reasons, what my mother said in the letter about the quilt cover floated to the top of my memory, so I silently analyzed: she was affected by the "context" of the society at that time. Is it because she is an ordinary old woman after all, and she can't help "caressing over every detail" for a quilt cover? Or does she not have the most thorough maternal love for me in the end? There have also been a few times, in front of my mother, the words came to my lips, and I was almost about to ask, but I finally swallowed it again, and it was right to swallow it.I also imagined that it was my mother's momentary humor. My mother is indeed a person with a sense of humor, but at the same time she is a person who never uses political words to humor.  Now I realized that what my mother said was very serious and serious. She told me that since I was released, I should try to solve things like changing the quilt cover by myself. In this kind of matter, she and I are already "" Two families", of course she is willing to help me, but that is indeed "promoting the spirit of Lei Feng", she is reminding me, "I should try my best to solve my own affairs independently".in retrospect, Since then, before I got married, I really never extended such a hand to my mother. My bedding and changing are all done by myself. If I can’t buy ready-made ones, I will buy cloth first, and then send them to the sewing shop in the street. Synthesis.  After my mother let me fly, I was getting farther and farther away from her hands that caressed me countless times, but all the life enlightenments she gave me, even today, can still be found in small details. The treasures come... Whoever says that the heart of an inch of grass will be rewarded with three springs! The person who loves me the most in the world has gone His father died of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage in 1978.After my father passed away, my mother took turns living in the homes of several of our children. She always maintained an independent personality, insisted on using her own money, wrote her own diary, and read a lot of books and magazines every day. When talking with older generations, she often expresses her rather unique insights.For example, every time she saw the then U.S. President Carter on the TV news, she always said: "This worried person!" She can appreciate the rather weird novels written by writers like Lin Jinlan... She His behaviors are still full of vitality, such as accepting a simple street shoe repairman as his godson, and so on.  In the late autumn of 1988, my mother was admitted to the hospital from her second elder brother's house due to extreme physical discomfort. She insisted on getting out of bed and sitting on a basin to defecate. After our children and her beloved grandchildren went to the hospital to see her, she resolutely pulled out the anti-failure drip that the nurse gave her one night, and followed her father with a smile.After her children became adults, she resolutely let them fly, and after she was widowed, what she thought of was never to be a burden to her children. When she was about to enter the situation where the children had to take turns to take care of her sick body, She adopted the method of self-euthanasia without making a declaration, and drew a refreshing end to her innocent life.  In the quiet night, when I think of my mother, I think of two Tang poems for no reason: "I only pity the shadow of a lamp, and it sucks in the eyes of thousands of miles." It was originally written by Qian Qi of the Tang Dynasty to see the Japanese monks off.What is created is the artistic conception that a dharma boat floats farther and farther on the sea, but the lights in the window of the boat always shine in the poet's heart.But I think these two lines of poems can be moved to cover the memory of my mother.The lamp of enlightenment she left to me will not be dimmed and extinguished because the time between us is getting longer and longer; on the contrary, in the journey of my life, it is shining brighter and brighter, but the light of enlightenment nourishes the soul. Silent, accompany me all the time in the solemnity.