Some people say that hometown exists for memories. This is only for people who go out to live abroad. There is some truth in this sentence. For thousands of years, many wanderers and tourists have been wandering around the world. In a night stop and rain near Fengqiao on the left bank of the south of the Yangtze River, they were told by future generations because they missed their hometown.
In the early 1970s, on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, a poet named Yu Guangzhong wrote a poem called Homesickness. This poem, together with songs from Hong Kong and Taiwan, was popular in Chinese mainland in 1980s and 1990s and lasted for a long time. This shows that everyone has a feeling of home and country.
Hometown is an old feeling that can never be bypassed.
In late autumn, the autumn sun shines high. On weekends, I ride home alone.
When I got home, my mother was not there. I shouted a few words, but there was no sound in the yard. Only Qiu Tong responded, and the leaves fell against the wind.
The door was unlocked, and my father dozed off alone on the sofa in the back room for twenty years. The old cat at home is also lying on the table opposite my father, living opposite. The wind blew in through the cracks in the window, overturned the Bible on the table, and then quietly left with the years. ...
My old father was awakened by me and saw me come back. Although he could not speak, his face lit up. Stretching out my movable right hand, I quickly caught it with both hands. My hands are warm and my heart suddenly calms down a lot.
I didn't ask my father and mother where they went, because it was no use asking. My father was paralyzed and unable to speak twenty years ago. In the past twenty years, the functions of language and thinking have deteriorated.
Put away the wheelchair, hold dad on it, push him into the yard and bask in the sun by the pear tree. Pear trees were planted by children when they were young. After ten years of wind and rain, I am graceful now. My son is also 5 meters tall and weighs nearly 100.
Clean the room, dry the bedding and clear the table. I shaved my father, washed my feet and cut my nails. A clock came down and my hot back was slightly wet.
After a rest, watching the sun gradually at noon, my mother still didn't come back. A man strolled towards the back of the village.
The village is not big, and there are fields hundreds of meters away. Passing through a tall Yang Shulin is the wheat field where villagers live. A few days ago, the autumn rain continued and there was plenty of rain. There are not enough wheat seedlings in the field and they are growing vigorously. Under the blowing of autumn wind, they fluctuate. Several old graves are covered with vegetation and scattered with wild flowers, which adds a bit of bleak atmosphere. An unknown bird landed on the dead branch of the grave, flying and jumping, and suddenly slammed into the sky …
Yang Shulin behind him is tall and sparse. It is late autumn and early winter, and the leaves are still luxuriant and withered. Sunlight shone on the fallen leaves through the gaps between branches. Geba grass grows on both sides of Lin Nakakoji. This is a kind of grass close to the ground, similar to a lawn. It is most common on the roadside and riverside in eastern Henan. This grass-roots system is developed vigorously, with extremely tenacious vitality, drought resistance and trampling resistance. At the beginning of enlightenment, read Bai Letian's "boundless grass on the grassland. With the seasons coming and going, wildfire never completely devours them, and they grow taller in the spring breeze." This kind of grass is my first thought.
I Baidu the scientific name of this grass, and there is no comment. It seems that this is a local grass, which is only suitable for grass growing in the Central Plains or the Eastern Henan Plain. However, this kind of grass is very similar to Henan people, with dense patches and dense clusters. Hard-working, tough, not easy to fold, not high-profile, not unassuming. Simple and unpretentious, close to the yellow land. It is said that people are like dirt, and I think Henan people are dirt!
Although the poplars in Yang Shulin are very tall, they are not stout, only as big as a big bowl. This fast-growing poplar, which has been widely planted in rural areas of eastern Henan in recent years, has far surpassed paulownia and become the most planted tree species in eastern Henan. In my early memory of my hometown, this kind of poplar does not exist. At that time, "Paulownia, Sophora japonica, Elm and Willow" were the four famous trees. Mixed with miscellaneous trees such as neem, Toona sinensis, mulberry and catalpa bungeana. Always in the depths of memory. Until now, I still have an innate sense of intimacy when I see these trees. For this kind of fast-growing poplar tree that came from behind and developed recklessly, it may be commonplace, but there is no goodwill at all.
Now, touching this Yang Shulin is not only unfriendliness, but also disgust. Because these trees not only do not exist in my "deep consciousness", but also encroach on my early memories. Because more than twenty years ago, there was a large flat wheat field at the foot of Yang Shulin.
We call the wheat field "altar" here, which means flat land. Also known as "stand", the verb here is a noun, indicating that the field where crops are spread to dry is a flat and solid field, which can dry wheat. Some places are called threshing floors, and we seldom grow millet here, which is called wheat fields.
More than 20 years ago, it used to be a flat and solid yellow land, about four or five acres in size. Every household in the village, you and I are all connected, and there is no obvious boundary. Most of them are brothers, and uncles are similar.
Wheat fields are idle most of the year. Only when the wheat is ripe in May, July and June will the wheat field become the "home" of every household. After pulling the harvested wheat from the field to the wheat field, every adult began to eat and live in the wheat field. Women cook every day, and children are responsible for delivering meals to the wheat fields. Male laborers live directly in wheat fields at night, guarding their own wheat.
After the wheat enters the field, it is spread flat and exposed to the sun for a period of time. Turn over the unsalted wheat with a tool called Mu Cha, and bask it in the sun evenly. When the wheat is about to be burnt, horses, cows and tractors come in handy. They are used to pull stones and crush them over and over again until the wheat grains are completely out of the ears. Then, pick up the wheat straw, leaving only the wheat grains, and then blow out the wheat bran mixed in the wheat grains by the wind, and the whole wheat harvesting process is basically over. Of course, I described the wheat harvest scenes in my memory from the 1980s to the early 1990s.
I wrote about this scene in a modern poem called Harvest Season many years ago. Poetically described: overnight/May wind/scorched all the wheat on the ground/dipped in longing/father made a sickle/ground it like a crooked waning moon on his head/when the rooster sang the world/we killed countless mature lives/the sun rose at noon/it was hot and dry/the wheat on the ground was broken/grandpa was the center/the reins were the radius/the old cow pulled the stone. The stone creaks and hums distant songs/the sunset at dusk/the season dyed red and yellow/in my brother's cheerful nursery rhyme/my mother holds it up devoutly/fills it with joy/tears that slip quietly/melts in the pile of brilliant gold under my feet/and at this moment/my father holds up the old pot of cold water/pours the fragrance. ...
After the wheat harvest, the noisy wheat fields were calm, leaving only the round and big wheat straw piles like yurts and the clean and flat fields that were cleaned. At this time, the wheat field has become the world of friends, running and playing on this flat and hard ground, jumping and jumping, using tall and round wheat straw piles as a cover, playing hide and seek, fighting, sometimes playing in the middle of the moon, and finally reluctant to go home in the call of parents. Of course, when you get home, you will inevitably get a scolding.
After the awning, a summer rain arrived as scheduled. In the wheat field after the rain, on the flat and hard land, many thumb-sized holes appeared overnight, that is, they "crawled out". "Climbing" is the larva of an immature cicada, and its name is limited to the eastern part of Henan Province. This little thing tastes good, and it was the first choice for game among friends. Every time the "fork climbing" season comes out, every household goes out to catch the fork after dinner. Behind the village, the lights of flashlights were everywhere, and the cries of friends calling for brothers and sisters came. In that era of material scarcity, eating a few fried "reptiles" was as delicious as human food. Now some restaurants in eastern Henan are beginning to treat it as a dish and put it on the banquet. It just tastes better, but it doesn't taste that way.
Eat "climb" and then eat mushrooms. In midsummer, with plenty of rain, wild mushrooms began to appear everywhere. Under the old wall, under the big tree and beside the furrow, there is a chubby umbrella. Wash the mushrooms with clear water, break them into small pieces, sprinkle with a handful of salt, wrap them in wet tung leaves, burn them on the kitchen fire for a few minutes, then take them out and untie the tung leaves. They are delicious. It tastes full of praise, and my mouth is full of saliva.
A greeting awakened my memory. It turned out that a villager with a foreign surname who lived behind the village called me. The villager's surname is Wang, and the word is Hai. According to my neighbor, I should call him brother. Brother Hai is twenty years older than me, and he is already sixty years old. I haven't seen Hagrid's mother since 18 years old. I asked the adults at home and said that Hagrid's mother remarried because life was tense in those years. Later, Hagrid and his father and brother were left alone. Hagrid and his brother never got married. There is a nosy person in the next village. After reading Gu Long's novels, he even wrote a couplet for Hagrid's family: "One bachelor, two brothers divorced." Although the words are a joke, the facts are true. A few years ago, Hagrid's old father died, and his only silly brother was tricked into begging in other places. I haven't heard from him for years. It is estimated that he has died in another country, and Hagrid has become a lonely man.
Chatting with Hagrid, I learned that he enjoys the minimum living allowance, has two acres of wasteland, and can still eat and wear. In a few years, if you can't move, you can apply to live in a nursing home, and you will feel safer.
When asked about other villagers, Hai had moved out, leaving only one of the three neighbors. What I saw on the way here just now is almost empty. Looking at the partition wall, the weeds in the yard are messy, which can be described as "the valley in the atrium and the sunflower in the well". At present, the total resident population of men, women and children in the village is less than 60, and most of them are old, weak, sick and disabled. Every time I go back to my hometown, I seldom meet my fellow villagers in the street. I also mobilized my mother to follow our brother to live in the town several times, but she refused resolutely on the grounds that she was not used to it, even though she served my father alone for more than 20 years.
After I left the village, I went home, but my mother had already come back. Wash vegetables and cook on the well platform. When I asked where I was going, my mother said she was going to town to buy daily necessities. She also told me cheerfully which supermarket was engaged in activities and which goods were on sale, and told me to go back and buy them quickly. I was so angry that I couldn't help laughing and crying. I said, "Just call me and let me buy it. Why ride alone? " Mother said, "As long as I have the kinetic energy to run, I won't bother any of you. You are also busy and don't want to give you any trouble. " Hearing this, my nose is sour and tears are coming out.
I am an ancient man. I have lived in the countryside all my life and cultivated land for half a century, and I have deep feelings for the land. A few years ago, all the fields in the village were contracted to outsiders to grow cash crops. She has no fields to grow, but she even cultivated two fields on the slope behind her hometown to grow some crops. Vegetables of this kind are also planted in the big yard at home. I know my mother said she was not used to it and didn't want to live with us, but it was actually difficult to leave her hometown.
None of our brothers advised me to move again. My eldest brother said that respecting my mother's choice is also filial piety. Yes, how can the high-rise buildings and reinforced concrete in the city encircle the heart of an old man who has dealt with the land all his life? We don't want the noise of city of hope to disturb their quiet and slow days. I don't want my parents to live in their limited old age, and they can't be satisfied.
The only thing I can do now is to go home and spend more time with them, sit with them in the winter sunshine, quietly listen to my mother talk about my parents' shortcomings and wipe the saliva off my beard. Because dad is here, mom is here, and home is here! Hometown is always there!