In the autumn when I was thirteen years old, 350 of the 360 families in our village had moved to the typhoon shelter on the east side of the dam, leaving our family standing in the clumsy autumn wind like rickety leaves.
In order to overcome thousands of difficulties and dangers, we must move to Taiwan Province before the Spring Festival. This is the order of the village. This is equivalent to giving my parents an ultimatum. How can we move this house if we want bricks instead of bricks, tiles instead of tiles, beams instead of beams, and reeds instead of reeds?
One night in the middle of the night, I got up at night and saw two faint fireworks flashing in the dark yard. The fireworks and rubble everywhere are really weak compared with the great loneliness of our family alone on the rubble! That's my father and mother smoking their own rolled tobacco leaves. I heard them say one word all the time: steal! They kept denying and affirming and finally decided to steal! How the word fits the situation that night: the night wind is bleak, the leaves are falling, and the frost is shrinking step by step!
My father and mother decided to act separately. Dad went out to buy reed foils and purlins, and mom led us to "steal".
My mother led us from stealing bricks. This action can't be done during the day. During the day, we just wander around the demolished house like ghosts, in order to see which bricks can be used to lay the foundation, which bricks can fill the groove and which bricks can be used as the bricks at the door when building the house. We picked up the bricks, put them together like weeds, and then erected a dark adobe as a mark. After making these preparations during the day, at night, it is time to act. But the action is usually in the middle of the night, and when there is no moon and no starlight. Usually after ten o'clock, my mother clearly saw that all the lights on the platform went out. She glanced at the sky, and there was no light or planetesimals, so she told us to steal bricks when we were sleepy.
Each of us brought a big cloth bag. My mother walked ahead and the wind was blowing at her feet. My sister follows my mother, covering her mouth and not coughing. I followed her like the smallest thief. We ran to the pile of bricks marked during the day, opened the bag and threw the bricks in. There are hundreds of cat paws scratching in my heart. If there is a wind or a mouse moves suddenly, I will think that someone is coming to catch us. I seem to hear the sound of catching thieves everywhere all night. But every time we steal a brick, our new house grows an inch, the new house on our defensive platform is in our heart, and the others are weak. My mother carries the most luggage, and I can't figure out how much it weighs. It is about like a hill. When carrying her back, my mother needs to bend her back at 90 degrees, and my sister and I need to hold it hard and help her carry it. My mother bumped into a brick on her back and wobbled. She gave the brick a hard push on her back and stabilized it. As solid as bricks in the foundation of a house.
In fact, that year, my mother was only in her thirties, with a weak body and a big brick on her back, and she could withstand the wind under her feet. My sister and I can only carry three or four bricks and have to rest on the ruins several times. Under normal circumstances, my mother goes back and forth four or five times, and we can only recite it once or twice. Carrying it on our backs, we take it for granted. Adobe and rotten bricks everywhere, darkness everywhere and frost everywhere are all ours.
Sometimes late at night, I am woken up by night owls, and suddenly my mother and sister are gone. They must have stolen bricks again.
Leaves fall from the sky one by one, telling something. There are more bricks in our yard than one, which also illustrates one point.
Dad came back from afar with the height and weight of a house, reed foil and purlin. My mother led my father to a corner of the garden and peeled off the thatch and branches of a mountain, revealing a lot of bricks and stones! The dust hidden in the wrinkles on my father's face suddenly fell to the ground, and tears fell to the ground. My mother said that she had asked the people who built the house that these bricks were enough to build the foundation of six tile-roofed houses in our family!
From their eyes, I saw six tile houses standing in the center of the typhoon shelter, and the villagers made fun of them and expressed their appreciation.
Enough bricks and stones, enough purlins, the adobe has long been lengthened, and only one girder is needed. A house without a girder is no more a house than a man without a backbone.
My mother said that she has always been optimistic about a big locust tree on the Erdaozi, which happens to be the beam of our house. My mother even climbed the locust tree and measured the size of the locust tree with her own body.
The moment that the big pagoda tree was attracted by my mother, it was doomed to be in the same boat with our family. It is also destined to end its walk on the earth and hold up a sky that does not leak rain and snow for us.
My mother said that the big locust tree, in spring, all the flowers went crazy. All the branches were covered with white flower clusters, and the branches that had not blossomed before also blossomed together. Because its branches are taller than all the locust trees on the second path, its head looks like a swimming cloud. My mother wants to give some axes to the big locust tree in spring, so as to save some energy when waiting to cut it again. But my mother couldn't bear to look at the beautiful locust tree in Erdaozi.
The leaves of Sophora japonica are also the last to fall. It seems that it is closest to the sky and has received the most care from God. Seeing that construction was about to start, mom and dad decided to go to Erdaozi in the middle of the night and "please" the big locust tree back.
Erdaozi is about six or seven miles away from my yard, and there are graves all the way. My parents are walking on the way to Erdaozi, like two ghosts. Although they were young at that time and had little time alone, they didn't care much about each other. The wind under their feet is still very strong, and they only support each other when they encounter obstacles or stones that trip each other. They are not like husband and wife, like two thieves who don't stop until they reach their goals, and have the same worries. Ghosts run away when they meet them.
When we arrived at Erdaozi, there was no one there. Who will come to this wild locust tree forest in the middle of the night except the couple who can't afford to build a house? The leaves fell in a thick layer and there was a slight noise under their feet. That big pagoda tree is still there, and my mother is very happy to see it stand upright to the sky! Immediately ran up and hugged the big locust tree, like holding a long-lost relative.
My father cut on the left of the locust tree, and my mother cut on the right. The locust tree trembled on the axe and several leaves fell off it. I don't know if this last fallen leaf is used to beat mom and dad, or is it a parting tear.
They cut down the big locust tree in the middle of the night. When it was about to fall, mom and dad asked the locust tree to fall to the northwest. This is how people lie in the soil. The fall of the pagoda tree woke a nightingale and made a heartbreaking sound. Its huge branches swayed in the sky a few times, slowly fell to the northwest, and finally fell to the ground with a bang. My parents were scared out in a cold sweat by the loud noise. If anyone sees them, they will be accused of destroying the property of the production team and locked up. Children will be left unattended, and building a house will be in the foreseeable future.
Mom and dad were so happy to see this big pagoda tree that they thought it was already on the roof of their house, which was magnificent. My parents are not interested in anything. They cut off the extra branches and tied two thick ropes to the roots of the big locust tree. Each of them carried one on his back and rushed in the direction of home. They don't care whether they step on the knife or the fire. All they care about is whether this big pagoda tree can reach our home smoothly. If someone comes to grab this big locust tree at this time, I estimate that mom and dad will definitely accompany him to the end!
Look! How nice! A poor couple, a few dirty children, one autumn passed, and they had everything.
Digging foundation, tamping, filling groove, paving adobe, purlin, and finally girder. It is the big locust tree that my parents cut back. That big locust tree has been peeled by carpenters, revealing bright wood grain and the fragrance of Sophora japonica. There is a red rope tied in the middle of the big locust tree, and four or five copper coins are hung at the lower end of the red rope. As the pagoda tree slowly rises to the roof, a burst of firecrackers crackles, which means that the house is about to be completed, which means that our family of six can settle down on the defensive platform on the bank of the Yellow River like other people in the village.
Before the Spring Festival, we moved to the typhoon shelter. These six adobe houses were basically "stolen" by my mother. Especially that big locust tree, since it came to my home, it has suffered more wind, frost, rain and snow than it did in Erdaozi!
Now, my mother's waist is really bent at 90 degrees. I feel that those broken bricks have been pressing my mother all these years, bending her spine and pressing her to the ground. Her head is still lush with the white of the last spring of the big locust tree, but those fragrant smells have lost with time and fallen into the long river of time!
two
Out of our village, across the Yellow River Dam, along the direction of the river, you can reach Yang Shulin. There are 200 poplars in Yang Shulin. Regarding these poplars, I wrote a poem "Mother's Yang Shulin" in 2007: When my brother left/my 65-year-old mother planted 200 poplars beside the Yellow River, and she raised/stroked them and the land like a son/approached her son to the greatest extent; These 200 poplars are very competitive/each one is alive and flourishing/each one is straighter than mother's waist/no imported medicine/no surgery, no cancer/mother planted peanuts, beans, mung beans and red beans in the forest/she wants to raise more companions for her son/after all, loneliness is a deep chronic disease; These 200 poplars/sipping the turbid Yellow River water/grabbing a whole piece of land on the west side of the dam/occupying the heart branded by their mother.
A leukemia killed my 24-year-old brother. This bolt from the blue broke the hearts of our family!
After my brother left, my parents returned the only acre of land to the village and never cultivated the land again, as if they had forged a deep hatred with the land. During the agricultural career of my father and mother, they loved and were loyal to the land. They were kind and honest, and finally fate took away their son and the land took them in. For ten years, my mother stayed at home, never plowed in the fields, never went to see if it was time for wheat to blossom, corn to head, cotton to turn white ... and her heart was gone. My mother's soul and bones have gone with my brother, and she has lost her original strength in any work. From time to time, I shut myself in a room in the westernmost part of our yard. I haven't eaten or drunk for days, and I won't open the door no matter who tells me. I only heard her crying like the waves of the Yellow River. She kept herself in the dark and made a slide show of her memories of her brother's short life to keep herself alive.
On the tenth anniversary of my brother's death, my sister helped my mother to cry at my brother's grave. It was ten years after my brother left, and my mother left home for the first time. It is also the first time to set foot on the land she has cultivated all her life. My mother has a lot of tears. Her tears wet my brother's house. She cried so hard that it rained and our sisters' hearts broke down. After coming back from my brother's grave, my mother seems to suddenly understand the truth that people can't come back from the dead. It seems that she can't just live for her brother on earth. She stopped shutting herself in the house and began to do housework and chat with her neighbors. I was busy cooking for us when I went back. But I suddenly found that my mother's hair was all white, as white as cotton in her field in autumn; Mother's back was bent, and a hill stood so high on her back. I don't know whether to name this mountain "Mount Everest" or "Mount Tai".
I can only say this: Niang's spine, protruding from her back into the shape of a mountain, pressed her to the ground; When Niang stood in the alley and waved to me, the mountains would tilt in a large area, and the accumulation of ice and snow in life would make the noise of mudslides. ...
The following spring, my little sister got three acres of land. Miss Jie and her parents discussed: this land is next to the Yellow River, near the water and near the moon, or planting watermelons; It can grow cotton or sorghum and corn. My mother was silent for a long time and said, plant these three acres of land into poplars and Mawan will buy saplings. I will plant them for you and take care of them for you. Aren't you going to buy a house in the city? You have no time to deal with other things. Besides, this place is opposite your brother's grave, and there is a dam in the middle. When I went to see poplars, I saw your brother, too!
The whole family was silent. My brother-in-law and sister bought 200 poplar saplings for my mother. Without saying a word, my mother wrapped a towel, carried a shovel and bucket, and went to Hexi Beach in my sister's new three-acre field. I am secretly glad that my mother abandoned the land because of pain. She went back to the land because she wanted to live for her children. My brother-in-law is going to get on the sports car, and my sister is pregnant again. These 200 poplar seedlings, my mother decided to personally let them take root in the soil, and what's more, let their roots plunge into the Yellow River. Three acres of land, covered with my mother's rickety figure. It's crawling, but it's actually crawling. Every step my mother takes is like crawling. She put the saplings into the tree pit, first threw a shovel of soil into it to stabilize the saplings, and then threw the surrounding soil into the pit until it was flush with the ground. During this period, my mother didn't stop or straighten her waist. In fact, she can't straighten her waist at all, so she is lower than any poplar sapling. If she stands up straight with a shovel, she will have to scare the birds away.
My mother knows that spring is as fleeting as a person's life. She wants to race against time in spring. Before the end of spring, she wants to plant these seedlings in the soil like a child, so that they can live a decent life quickly. Even if my mother works hard, like when she first contracted the land, she can only plant six or seven trees a day, day and night. Every tree should be covered with a small car of soil. After filling in the soil, mother will go to the Yellow River with a bucket. She can't stand by and watch the water from the Yellow River wash away from her house in vain. She filled the bucket, walked all the way to the newly planted sapling, lay down and built a ridge near the root of the sapling, smoked a cigarette, caught her breath, and then poured the water down. The Yellow River water bubbled slowly into the roots of saplings, and some even sneaked back to the Yellow River and followed a large group of people all the way to the sea. It was not until a cuckoo crossed the Yellow River and flew over my mother's messy white hair that my mother finally let these 200 poplar trees take root in the soil.
These young trees are very obedient to their mother. I also understand my mother's painstaking efforts and thrive. Soon, the lush landscape attracted a lot of wind and rain, and also attracted birds to fly and sing. At this time, mother can calm down and let her eyes cross the dam and fall on a touch of loess. Her mind is inch by inch as tall as an poplar.
This fledgling Yang Shulin sucked my mother's heart away. My mother takes shovels and buckets to the Woods almost every day. My mother stood on the dam and looked at the loess in the east and straight in the west. She didn't work in the Woods first, lit a cigarette first, sat on the ground casually, and looked at every tree seriously, just like when we were young, with kindness and concern in her eyes. Suddenly, my mother took a sip of cigarette, immediately put it out and pressed it to the ground. Like when she was a child, she suddenly got up and rushed to a poplar tree in the middle of the forest. She found that the saplings withered, the leaves were covered with white silk mesh, and there were some small holes in the trunk, which were very dense and symmetrical, like needles pierced with awls with soles. A terrible thought crossed her mind: the American white moth must be a hateful American white moth!
The reason why my mother comes to see her poplars every day is to prevent these trees from being harmed. But now something terrible has happened. While my mother was away, the American white moth invaded her Yang Shulin. And launched an all-round offensive against the weakest poplar, almost making this poplar fall in its own position. My mother can't let this poplar get cancer like her son. My mother decided to fight back immediately, taking out her dying years and missing and loving someone to fight back. My mother ran home in three steps and two steps, and the hills on her back swayed, making my mother look a little deformed. But my mother doesn't care about these things. She knows that being unable to save people is more painful and helpless than falling off a cliff. Now she must save the tree. She made medicine for the tree like a doctor: one catty of dichlorvos and fifteen jins of water. My mother put these medicines in the sprayer and ran to Yang Shulin swinging the sprayer. My mother can still run all the way home. With dozens of pounds on her back, my mother couldn't run any more, so she slowly-climbed! Just like in the swamp! Her back is really a symphony. A grass will laugh at my mother's posture. My mother came to the poplar, scolded severely, pressed the sprayer well, shot her arrow at those hidden American white moths and showed her knife. A few minutes later, this poplar tree was washed by my mother, and all the dirt was washed away, revealing a bright green. My mother doesn't want to watch this poplar die. If this poplar tree dies, my mother who has seen too many lives and deaths will cry to death. Every few days, my mother will carry out an extermination of the American white moth on this tree. This poplar and other poplars slightly bitten by the American white moth miraculously survived under the care and love of their mothers. They planted it for eight years, and none of them died.
In fact, now that I think about it, my mother didn't plant these poplars for my brother. Twenty years after I fled that land, my little sister moved into the city and got rid of that land completely. We have all become birds leaving the land and Woods, dragging our wounded wings between the tall buildings and chimneys in the city, exhausted and at a loss. Whether I go home or my little sister goes home, my mother always takes us around Yang Shulin, doing nothing, sometimes just listening to the wind, and sometimes just looking at the fallen leaves. ...
It suddenly occurred to me that this land was specially left by my mother for my little sister and me. When we are tired of working hard in the city, this is where we recuperate and our last retreat. My mother, a 70-year-old sick woman, has been watching us. Poplar is deeply rooted in our land. People with land have roots like poplars. People with roots are not afraid of the dangerous beaches of evil people on earth! Along the direction of missing, I try to fly, and a towering Yang Shulin is my home forever!
three
My melon garden is on the beach on the west side of the dam, near the Yellow River, with only half an acre of land. It's a clay tablet left after the flood of the Yellow River recedes. This land does not belong to the production team, but belongs to the Yellow River. Looking carefully, the ripples of running water are clearly visible, smooth and beautiful. My mother took the lead in breaking this beauty. She made a square ridge around a piece of land with clay boards. Once the ridge is built, the land will be named after my mother, and no one will want to take it again. My mother looked at the waves still rushing in the ridge, reluctant to break it, but surrounded it with a clay board, not to see the waves. She was going to turn this land into our melon garden, and life was too hard. My mother and my whole family need a kind of sweetness to support them. The bachelors in our village are all crazy about money, and passers-by and lost people need such support. Actually, it's enough for my mother to support our whole family. Here are my thoughts. My mother's thinking is not so great and far away.
In the enclosed field, my mother turned over the soil boards piece by piece with a shovel, fell down with a shovel, cut off rows of waves, turned fresh soil into the sun, and cut off large clods. The clay tablet changed its appearance, became moist, soft and smart, and became complacent, ready to meet all the seeds. After turning this clay tablet over, my mother patted the ridge evenly in the field and dug small holes evenly in the ridge, just waiting for the arrival of a spring rain, just waiting for a seed to be put into her arms.
Before and after Grain Rain, we planted melons and beans. A spring rain drifted by, and my mother felt that the time was ripe. She wrapped a towel around her head, carefully put the sprouted melon seed bowl on the windowsill into the basket and went to Xihetan. My mother let the shovel bask in the sun outside the ridge and listen to the Yellow River. She doesn't use a shovel. She carefully squeezed the germinated black seeds and red seeds out of the bowl, dug a small pit by hand, put the buds on it and carefully buried them in the soil. At this time, you can't step on it with your feet, for fear of stepping the bud back into the shell. At this time, the small north wind still blows for a day and a half from time to time, and the sandstorm is still fascinated by my mother's eyes from time to time. But my mother has seen many sandstorms. She is not afraid of these small sandstorms, besides, she has heard the sound of the Yellow River thawing and the excited neighing of horses in spring. So my mother persistently sprinkled a lot of melon seeds into the ground.
After putting the melon seeds in this mud, my mother seems to be busy with other things, as if nothing had happened. In fact, she has always carried this clay tablet with these melon seeds in her heart. Like me, since my mother put melon seeds in the pit, I have been expecting them to sprout, grow and bloom like candy. As a result, my mouth watered when I thought about it, and I was eating melons and cantaloupes in my dreams ... My mother would go to Gua Tian to dig up the soil to see the market, and then carefully bury it.
Waiting to follow my mother to the melon garden, colorful seeds carefully buried by my mother emerged from the ground. Like a green stream, it suddenly gushed out of the Yellow River. They just left the land, tied up high and produced two petite green leaves. They have just been born from the womb of the earth, as delicate as babies. But a bird song makes them happy, and a drop of spring rain makes them thrive. They seem to be for my mother, as if they were for me. In May, their short stems can no longer support the slender vines. Vines are no longer satisfied with the narrow land under their feet. They use the dark night and strong spring breeze to extend into the distance. The vines on this tree are intertwined with other trees, and the vines on other trees are also intertwined with vines in the distance nearby. For a time, they became green fields. When the weather is warm, they will have yellow flowers. If bees and butterflies dance, it's as if these creatures were born on these clay boards. This clay tablet not only gives birth to green seedlings, butterflies and bees, but also crickets, crickets and a round of Bai Yue.
In fact, the moon was born in the universe and has never changed. My mother insisted that it was born in her melon garden. The moon is kind and soft, because it shines on the melon garden without stint; Guayuan is smart because it is accompanied by the moon.
In the early morning, the sun climbed over the old houses and dams, and shed a layer of brilliance on the melon garden in Hexi Beach. Dewdrops swayed in the sky. When the yellow flowers wither, the green fruits of Xiaoqing will fall on the vines. My mother saw Xiao Guo, just like when I was born, with a kind and painful expression on her face. I swallowed after her, and my mother grabbed the melon leaves and carefully put them under the olives. Then the cat squatted down to look for other fruits. All morning, my stomach was full of saliva, but my mother felt that I didn't exist and put herself in this melon garden wholeheartedly. Because my mother wears a turban and some butterflies are partners, dancing on my mother's head. The sun moved the soft palms back and forth on my mother. All the hardships of my mother's life have fallen to this pastoral area!
A small fruit is a kind of happiness, and a small fruit means a big fruit means a lot of sweetness. At this time, it is time to build a shack and see the melon garden. A shack is a simple shed with four sticks as fulcrums. There are thinner sticks on the shed. Straw is on the stick, and half of the dead vines are thrown in the shed. The shed is wide and low around. Put another cot in the shed and it will be over. From May to July, people who look at the melon garden will snore between heaven and earth, and only under the melon shed seen by the moon, even cricket will be drowned by him.
Crazy money is a bachelor, only one eye can see the light, but he is a big shot and everyone is afraid of him. Otherwise, the Yellow River Affairs Bureau will not trust him to guard the hundreds of miles long levee and hand over the flowers and trees on the hundreds of miles long levee to him for management. My mother gave crazy money the job of looking after the melon garden. He can get many benefits by helping our family look after the melon garden: for example, when the melon is ripe, he will take a bite first to ensure that he is full; Second, on the 30th, he can come to our house to have a few drinks with my dad and eat our white flour jiaozi. Third, my mother will give money to crazy people for patched clothes that my father doesn't wear. Although crazy money dressed my dad's coat like a vest and my dad's pants like shorts, he still happily held his clothes and accepted the fact that he had spent several months in Gua Tian, Xitan, with the moon and the Yellow River under his pillow.
The moon is clean, bright, quiet and serene. Like a person who has nothing to worry about after the dust settles. Its vast white light holds a lush melon garden, many flowers and fruits, a melon shed that is open everywhere, and the light from one eye is mixed in the palm of your hand. Besides the Jade Rabbit in the Moon, besides Chang 'e WU GANG, it is also included in this pastoral area. It is this idyllic land that connects heaven and earth into a picture in between. Crazy money is rich, he has the darkness and light of the whole night, and he has the vitality and nectar of the whole melon garden. It seems that crazy money also comes from this pastoral area, and these moonlight and sweets have absorbed the vicissitudes of his life. It seems that this melon garden is named after him. And I always tiptoed behind the crazy money, watching his fingers play the melon round and round, saying it was almost ready. Playing with that melon said it was almost ripe, and the melon soil was red and sweet. ...
Once the moon was hidden in the clouds, crazy money left the melon garden and went to the dam to look after his house. As for how many melons he took, my mother didn't care at all.
A gust of wind raised the temperature to a higher level, and a cuckoo walked in the street, announcing the news that wheat was ripe. Crazy money announced to my mother that the melon garden was mature. You must be careful when you walk into the melon garden. Otherwise, a big melon will surprise you. Green skin, green skin, leopard print, face melon ... are all mature. Under the care of crazy money and the moon, they all grew up, with outstanding charm, plump figure and rich nectar. Pick any one, draw a small mark on the melon head with your nails, and gently break it off. A sweet smell immediately fills your heart, and a juice also ripples between the seeds and the pulp, ripples on the ground, and then takes a big bite. All the longing for waiting, all the longing for expectation, all the efforts, and all the bitterness of days have been dissolved and vanished. I think crazy money also solves the loneliness and desolation of life in this way.
My mother picked melons and gave them to Naked Crazy San, blind sister-in-law, dumb Ping and lame brother Zhou. My mother said that everyone who is unlucky should taste this sweetness! The remaining melons were put in baskets and sold in the market. Whose house did those melons go to? Who did those honey juices give sweet dreams and imagination to? Did I grow up on that farm? That pastoral area has long been washed away by the Yellow River and was taken away by the waves for my childhood. Now the moon in the sky, do you still keep that pastoral song for me? ...