Chapter 9 His name is "Man"

When the mother came back from the city, the little boy broke free from the nurse's hand and ran along the flower path, his arms outstretched like wings to the wind. Mom squatted down and opened her arms too.The two hugged beside the blooming calendula.The little boy kissed his mother's neck and ears, straightened up to look at his long-lost mother, and then leaned closer to kiss his mother's nose and eyes. Mother remembered An An's painstaking crying and miserable pleading at the time of parting: "Mom—An An also wants to go to the city—to buy books—" There were still traces of tears on my cheeks; after all, this long and painful separation had only lasted six back and forth hours.

Mother took her tender little hand and walked towards the door, asking softly: "Honey, what did you do when Mommy wasn't around?" In fact, you know it without asking: eating lunch, playing with cars, fighting with the babysitter not to go to the toilet, picking black strawberries in the garden, riding a tricycle, getting wet pants... But the boy answered calmly: "I think about things." Mom almost burst out laughing—a two-and-a-half-year-old child "thinking about things"?Peeking at the solemn expression of the little boy, the mother did not dare to be rash, held back her laughter, and asked him:

"What are you thinking about?" "Well—" the little boy replied solemnly, "I think, what should I do without my mother." The mother was taken aback, stopped, and after making sure that she had heard correctly, she squatted down and stared into the child's eyes. An An looked at her mother calmly, as if she just said "Mom, I'm thirsty". "Why is it that when a man is busy with his career, no one thinks to ask him: How do you take care of your family? Why is a woman so busy with her career that people think she has abandoned her family? What kind of idiot double standard is this? Why is your busy schedule a sign of success , I am busy with official duties because I am too ambitious and abandon my motherhood?"

After growling for a while, Mom turned her back on Dad and ignored him. An An held a thin willow branch and emerged from the depths of the grass, which was taller than a person. He saw Baba building a fire and marinating barbecue on the picnic table.He saw his mother sitting on the grass, the sun shone through the linden leaves, swaying round and round on her back. "Mom, what are you doing?" He walked over like an old friend, shoulder to shoulder with his mother. "Mom is—" The mother hesitated, "thinking about something." An An held the willow branch and made a fishing gesture.

"What are you thinking about?" "think---" Mom didn't know how to answer.She is unwilling to deal with this little person, because she thinks that this little person, who is not as tall as grass, is an independent and dignified life, and she respects it.However, how did she explain to the two-and-a-half-year-old: Marriage, like the democratic system, is just a human being's last choice in weighing the pros and cons of many systems; the other side of a happy marriage is the inevitable reduction of personal free will.How does she explain to the two-and-a-half-year-old that while the world praises maternal love and respects women, it refuses to give women the opportunity to develop their potential and desires as individuals?How does she say to the child: Mom is feeling sorry for the flaws in life?

"What are you thinking, mother?" the little fishing boy reminded the thoughtful mother. The mother sighed and said: "Mom is not happy!" She reached out to embrace the small body. The little friend stood up straight, touched his mother's cheek, and said solemnly: "Mom, don't be unhappy. An'an is happy, mom is happy. Mom is happy, dad is happy." Mother raised her head as if she had been electrocuted, and asked incredulously, "What did you say? What did you say?" "An'an is very happy. An'an is happy, mom is happy. Mom is happy, dad is happy."

Mom sat with her head in her arms, not moving for a long time, as if she had fallen asleep.She was actually listening to the gurgling of the brook behind the bushes.The brook that doesn't talk, doesn't talk about theory.She finally stood up, patted the mud and grass on her body, took her little friend's hand, and walked to the stream. "Let's go to Papa," she said, "he must be collecting sticks." "Nvwa picked up a lot of five-color stones, that is, stones with five colors, and picked a lot of reeds, reeds? It's a kind of tall grass that grows by the river. In our yard Isn't it planted with miscanthus? Yes, reeds look very similar to miscanthus.

"Nvwo boiled the five-color stones in the stone pot and set fire to the fire with reeds. The fire was very hot, and the five-color stones were boiled into stone slurry. Stone slurry? It's like porridge, yes, like oatmeal porridge, sticky and sticky of……" One misty afternoon, mother and son sat face to face.Hua An straddled her mother's lap, twirling her fingers around her long hair. "Do you remember why Nuwa wanted to mend the sky?" An An pondered for a while, and said, "It's raining, Gong Gong." "By the way, the god of water, Gonggong, and the god of fire fought, and the name of the god of fire, mother forgot—"

"Zhu Rong! Mom is stupid." "Okay, Zhu Rong, when we were fighting, we poked a big hole in the sky, so the water rushed down from the sky and destroyed the rice fields—the rice fields? "There are wheat fields on the grassland, right? The rice fields are very similar to the wheat fields, but a lot of water is poured into the rice fields—no, no, it is not watered by Gong Gong, but by farmers. The rice fields are so fragrant, when the wind blows , like a burst of green waves, pushing a faint fragrance..." My mother thought of the wet and soft feeling of stepping on the ridge with bare feet, and the feeling of looking down at the waves of rice under the moonlight.She once lodged in an unknown town and an unknown hotel.In the early morning, a cold fragrance flowed into the window, into her eyes, eyebrows and nose. She woke up following the fragrance, looking for the source of the fragrance. It turned out to be the boundless rice fields outside the window, half asleep and half awake in the white mist...

"Where did I go? Oh, Nu Wa saw people suffering, and felt very hurt. She wanted to save them, so she went to mend the sky. But An'an, do you remember who made people?" An An didn't answer, but just looked into her mother's eyes. "Nuwa floated to a lake one day, and saw her own shadow reflected in the clear water: long black hair, sallow skin, very beautiful. She thought, there is nothing like her on this beautiful land, What a pity. "So, she sat by the lake, grabbed a handful of clay, and started kneading it like she was in the lake. "Hey, An'an, what's wrong with you? Are you listening? If you don't listen, I won't talk anymore?!"

An An just looked into her mother's eyes. "Nu Wa pinched a clay doll, and then she aimed at the nose and eyes of the clay doll, and blew gently, long, and gently, and the clay doll, amazingly, started to move. Jumping into Nüwa's arms, she stretched her arms and hugged her neck tightly, shouting 'Mom! Mom!' Nüwa saw that the clay doll looked exactly like her own shadow in the lake." "An'an, what are you looking at?" The little boy's eyes were wide open, without blinking, he reached out to touch his mother's eyeballs, and his mother moved away. "What are you doing, baby?" The baby shouted anxiously, "Mom, don't move..." while opening the mother's eyelids with two fingers. "What are you looking at?" "I'm watching—" An An stared into her mother's eyes intently and deeply, with surprise and joy in her voice, and announced word by word: "Mom, your eyes, eyeballs, you have me and An'an in your eyes, really..." As he talked, he became excited, and stretched out his fingers to touch his mother's eyeballs—"Really, Mom, there are..." The mother smiled, and she saw her own image reflected in the child's pupils, clear and true, like a mirror, like a pool of clear water in a lake.She said to the child's pupils: "Nu Wa happily gave the clay doll a name, a very simple name called 'Human'."