My childhood can be said to be relatively happy, because my mother's family and our family are two adjacent villages, just like neighbors, familiar and cordial. I have eaten the meals of every family on the way from my home to my grandfather's home. It is because I have passed our village that I call all the people who live along the way my grandfather. In this way, I have been able to taste all the delicious food in my parents' homes. Memory is always a strange curve, and it will help you turn it out slowly when you care about something. At this time, if you slowly experience and taste, there will always be an indescribable emotion around your heart, which will occupy your heart for a long time and refuse to leave. (Note: grandfather, meaning grandfather, Gansu dialect)
Having said that, it's time for our fathers to appear, laying the groundwork for so much, in fact, to show their respect. This feeling always feels too frivolous and less solemn, so I just said a few more words. You see, in the loess under the sun, it is my parents who bend over and sweat; Under the kerosene lamp under the starry night, it is my parents who are stitched up one by one; It was also my parents who turned over the wheat straw in the hot sun. In this way, they appeared in every corner of my life, and they can be found in every corner of my childhood memory.
People living in the northwest still depend on God to a greater extent. Generally speaking, "Look at God's face to eat", which is helpless. Looking at a face that makes you unable to figure out God's face to eat can only make it more difficult. And the loess plateau not only has the unpredictable wind, but also the repeated heavy rain. All my parents have is a strong body and the will to fight against the sky, and nothing else. So if you want to live here, the price you have to pay is very expensive. The survival mode is similar to the writer Lu Yao's book "Ordinary World", which relies on manual labor to support your life.
the conditions for survival are generally summarized as: eating enough and wearing warm clothes. Therefore, under the extremely harsh conditions, parents spent a lot of time on the construction of basic living facilities and the continuation of rations. Let's talk about infrastructure construction first. Being in the embrace of the northwest region, under the premise that all kinds of building materials are insufficient, we can only dig out our own dwellings-caves on this loess plateau by our own strength. The generation of caves can be said to be hands-on. We dig them out from the flat with a shovel in our hands, and then carry the excavated soil with a pole. This process will last at least six months to a year before we can see the scale. For detailed information about this process, you can refer to the local chronicles of Gansu, or the production process and video data of caves, so you can get a comprehensive understanding, so I won't talk much about it here.
The birth of a cave in a family embodies the hard work of the whole family, so it is not necessary to dig the cave and then you can move in. It is also necessary to consider the drainage problem of the deep pit courtyard. After all, the heavy rain on the loess plateau is always unkind. After the drainage problem is solved, we should also consider the erosion of flowing water above the top floor of the cave. After all, this kind of deep pit cave rain in the flat land has a special liking, and the favorite game is the game of giving charcoal in the snow. Only after solving the high-risk problems of drainage and backward flowing water can it be regarded as a preliminary completion. However, the parents still have some requirements for the aesthetic feeling of life, and they will smooth the surface inside the cave, and in addition, they will beautify it. When I was a child, the newspaper was particularly popular. The magic is that when you were lying on the kang of the cave, you looked up with words. As for me, I learned a lot of words in this newspaper. There are many memories of caves, but I can only think of these for a while.
Cave dwellings solve the problem of living accommodation, and grain planting ensures the continuity of rations. In fact, the most impressive thing is when wheat is cut, which is the busy farming time in northwest China. The complexity of wheat cutting is mainly reflected in wheat cutting, bundling, handling, drying, grinding, wheat screening, field lifting, bagging and warehousing. (Note: What is listed here is only the process observed by ourselves)
Because of the particularity of wheat harvesting and the underdevelopment of mechanical farm tools at that time, parents had to harvest with the help of their sickles, and because of the high reality of wheat, they had to squat down to harvest, and one cut was a whole day. Cutting down wheat is the first procedure to deal with wheat, and it is also a special job to test the patience and labor of parents. The wheat is cut and piled up in the ground for bundling, and then checked back to its own field by manpower or ox cart, which is considered as the completion of the handling process.
drying is like fried noodles. You have to roll the wheat with straw until it can be ground. I have a story with this drying process, that is, my brother and I got into it to play hide-and-seek and almost got hit. Screening wheat is actually the process of removing impurities, so that after the wheat is bagged at the back, it is sent to the flour mill to produce white and clean flour. It will be a happy thing if we can finish the busy farming from beginning to end in this way, but I said "God will give you face", and he will give you a visual feast of lightning and thunder when you are busy, and then look at these miserable people living under him who are busy protecting their rations. It is a bit ironic to think about God. In fact, this is not bad, and it will give you a buffer time. If he is grumpy, there will be a heavy rain, and he expects a year's harvest to go with the water, then you have to look at his face. Therefore, the parents who can stand still under such harsh conditions are really powerful, and this is enough for me to study for half my life.
The wind is blowing again on the loess plateau, and the rain is on the way. Some of my parents also took this opportunity to travel around the world. They have struggled with this loess and God all their lives, and their backs are still straight until now. I'm far away from home now, but I miss them often, but sometimes I don't know how to express them. I always feel embarrassed to express them directly, so I can only visit and repay them in another way slowly, which can be regarded as doing my part. When I write here, I think of Zhang Xiaofeng's book Counting the Sheep Who Miss, which says, "I can have my own land, my hometown, my old folks who can paint, and my sweat worth recording-what is more fortunate for a painter?" .
in my opinion, the blood of my parents has already been integrated with the softness and hardness of the wind, and the rain has moistened things silently, but their souls are still fresh and bright. People in paintings can be painted by painters, and the stories of their fathers have just begun to flow in the pen. In this life, there are endless words and endless writing ...