However, the spring passed away, and Yan came back

Author: Chen Jing

Comrade Li Xiulian:

Hello!

I'm your daughter. In the year when you were born to me, you were neither fully prepared nor full of joy. When you are in your twenties, you lie at the head of the bed. The coal stove in the room is burning red, but you still feel very cold. You wear a scarf on your head that you don't like and receive congratulations from everyone. You don't know what's gratifying. You curl your stubborn mouth, no smiling face and no crying. You look at me a few times, probably because I'm red like a wrinkled little monkey, and reluctantly put your breast into my mouth. Maybe my tender mouth massaged your most fragile and beautiful instinct. You gently squeezed my hand the size of a quail egg. What you didn't expect was that I held your forefinger tightly, and your fingers were a little sore. At that moment, you suddenly realized that although you haven't really grown up, you have become a mother. Although you don't have passionate wishes, my umbilical cord is tied tightly with you.

You have never been a gentle person. You will make me suspicious of life because I don't say hello and steal the change on the tape recorder. You will also scold me bloody because I'm full of boasting and don't tell the truth. Your sternness and stubbornness made me beaten when I was young, but your honest and pure soul has been twisting a wick for my young heart, and at first I didn't feel its existence, But when I grow up, it will never die in my heart.

Do you still remember that I got a math paper with 58 points back in the third day of junior high? I didn't talk to you for a long time. You are busy working at school. I can't see your hard work for me to travel back and forth between Yumen Town and Jiuquan on weekends. My heart is full of troubles of a girl who has just arrived in the flower season but has no place to talk. I thought I knew everything about the world, but I can't do anything about it, which makes me angry and helpless. In my heart, you are an incompetent mother who can only lose her temper and do nothing. When you held the paper in your hand, I was elated by the amazement on your face. My heart had rehearsed the moment when you hit me with your slippers. When I should argue with you about something, you opened the paper and looked at it carefully. You didn't show any fake tenderness, just looked up and said sternly, come here. That night, you worked with me carefully on that paper. In the part of your knowledge blind spot, you even asked me several questions, and then verified with me one by one whether it was correct. That night you told me a lot of learning methods and essentials in detail. Although it is not the right and correct wisdom, at least it makes my learning no longer lag behind. Later, my life was the same as yours. After stumbling through the journey, I gradually understood your difficulties. You didn't want to teach me more, but you struggled in this world, got and learned only so much. You have no reservations, no matter right or wrong, and gave it to me. Although you are not the most successful mother, you are the one who pays the most attention to me.

We also had a sweet mother daughter time, after I entered the university. When you retire, you gradually become less aggressive and more cheerful. At this time, I found that, as a math teacher all your life, your favorite thing is singing and dancing. You follow the senior college and community dance team, from Jiuquan to Lanzhou, and then from Lanzhou to Beijing. You often laugh happily. You know many people you never met before. Those people are as lively and cheerful as you. Their eyes narrow when they smile. I think your purity is the best medicine in the world. Who knows? In a few years, someone hung it up for drying, and then bought it from two places.

The sweet time is very short. As I began to open up my own copy of life, I gave you fewer and fewer calls. Sometimes you stop talking, which makes me very impatient. When meeting you, I always pretended to ignore the sadness and loneliness in your eyes. You didn't make trouble with me, but after that, I'm more tired of you. Who doesn't stumble around the world with a soul in his hand? You are always so warm and tough. Where can I take care of you?

One day, when you came to me with a bank statement in your hand, I saw clumps of white hair on your temples that could not be covered even if you were dyed. For the past ten years, your hard earned salary has made those who are as lively and cheerful as you and smile like a crack clean. I didn't hold you. I told you that it was OK. Those money were all external things. I accused you that I didn't even leave any money for my house decoration. I'm not blind to your despair, but I just told you to be careful before turning around coldly. Don't be fooled again.

In retrospect, if I could, like you, hold back the waves in my heart, sit down with you, and calmly sort out your life papers like you taught me, would you not be like this now.

After that, you became very quiet. It is neither as fierce and arrogant as when young, nor as lively and cheerful as when middle-aged. You always sit on the sofa and want to knit a sweater vest for your grandson. You finally became the mother I always wanted to have in my mind, gentle and quiet. Even if I lost my temper with you, you just turned your back and cried silently, and then asked me heartlessly what I wanted to eat in the afternoon. When I found that you, who used to be very dexterous, had knitted a woolen vest for more than half a year, it was too late. You close the door of your heart quietly, and your cognition slowly begins to degenerate.

Only one day, when you went out to buy vegetables and didn't go home in the morning, did the careless father realize the seriousness of the problem. After you were diagnosed in Jiuquan, I didn't give up and took you to Beijing again. You were very excited on the plane. I asked you, are you happy? You just nodded when you didn't speak. I asked you again, do you remember flying before? When did you sit down? I didn't. I lowered my head and held back my tears. In fact, you forgot that you flew to Beijing several times while dancing in the community.

When we arrived in Beijing, because of the requirements of the hospital during the epidemic, the patients must be completely closed and isolated. When I sent you to hospital, you held my hand tightly. Did you say you didn't want me? Before that, I held you every day and promised you that we would never leave you behind. But within ten minutes, you began to worry like a child. When I stood outside the frosted glass door of the ward and heard you crying inside, my heart was broken. Finally, the doctor had to use the restraint belt for you. That afternoon, I took your grandson's photos and handed them to you. You looked at our photos and slowly quieted down. The nurse who took care of you said, pointing to the photo, this is Duoduo. You looked at my photo carefully and said, this is me... No, this is very familiar. I went back to the hotel, settled down my father, said I would buy fruit, and squatted in the street in front of the hotel, crying.

I want to hold you and heal the pain in your heart, but the deep wound bleeds. I think that even the best medicine in the world can't cure you, and the umbilical cord you and I are connected to is tearing my heart.

When I came back from Beijing, I met you at Jiayuguan Airport. At the moment you came out, although you didn't speak, I knew that your eyes lit up when you saw me. I smiled and hugged you and put my head on your chest. Although you stayed for a while, your hand finally firmly embraced me.

Yesterday you came to see your grandson. I asked you, Mom, do you remember how old you were? You gave me a blank look and said, "Isn't it five years old?"?

Yes, Mom, you are right this time.

Chen Jing

April 7, 2021

(Recommended by the Fourth Exploration Institute of Gansu Provincial Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources)