I remember it was "Giving Eternal Regret"
"Giving Eternal Regret" (excerpt)
The title was given by Miss Han Xiaohui, hence the name. It's called "Fu De". But the article was written willingly, so it is not stereotyped writing.
Why am I willing to write such an article? In a word, the title is well chosen, and it not only really won my heart, but also won my heart first: I have wanted to write something like this for a long time.
I have reached the age of nine. In the past seventy or eighty years, from the countryside to the city; from domestic to foreign countries; from primary school, middle school, university to foreign research institute; from "ambitious to learn" to more than "doing what one wants without going beyond the rules", with many twists and turns, Ups and downs. I walked through Yangguan Avenue and a small single-plank bridge; I passed through "mountains and rivers and there is no way out", and I saw "a village with dark willows and bright flowers". Joy and sorrow go hand in hand, disappointment and hope fly together, I have experienced a lot. When it comes to regrets, they are everywhere. I have to choose the deepest, truest, and most unforgettable regret among them, that is, the eternal regret. It is also within easy reach, because it has never left my heart for a moment.
My eternal regret is: I should not have left my hometown and my mother.
I was born in an extremely poor village in northwest Shandong. Our family is the poorest of the poor. It can really be said that we are poor without a foothold. During the ten years of catastrophe, I personally stood up against the rebellious but popular "Lafayette" from Peking University. She regarded him as a thorn in her side and wanted to get rid of him quickly. Her minions came to my hometown twice and deliberately "beat" me into a landlord. Their vicious teacher airs did not scare my fellow villagers. One of my childhood friends pointed at their noses and said loudly: "If the whole Guanzhuang family came to complain, Ji Xianlin's family would be the first!"
This sentence is not an exaggeration, he said is the truth. My grandparents died young, leaving my father and three brothers alone and helpless. The youngest uncle gave it away. My father and uncle Jiu were so hungry that they had no choice but to go to other people's jujube groves to pick up dried jujubes that fell on the ground to satisfy their hunger. This is certainly not a long-term solution. In the end, the brothers were forced to leave their hometown and migrate to Jinan to make a living. At this time, they were only in their teens and twenties. In a big city with no friends, Uncle Jiu must have gone through a lot of hardships and settled in Jinan. So my father returned to his hometown and said he was a farmer, but he had no land to cultivate. It must be that after all the hardships, Uncle Jiu sometimes sent some money home from Jinan, and his father relied on it to make a living. Somehow, I found (read Ruoxin) a wife, and she was my mother. My mother’s maiden name is Zhao, and she is from the same family. Her family is almost as poor as ours, otherwise we would never get married. Her family doesn't have enough food to eat, so how can she have the money and time to go to school? So my mother didn't know a word and lived her whole life without even a name. Her house is on another village, five miles away from our village. This five-mile journey was the longest distance my mother had ever walked in her life.
That person at Peking University who "Lafayette" wanted to "beat" into a "landlord", that is, me, was born in such a family and had such a mother.
Later I heard that our family had indeed been "rich" for a while. Around the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Uncle Jiu used the last five cents left in his pocket to buy one-tenth of the Hubei flood lottery tickets in the three northeastern provinces and won the prize. The two brothers discussed that they should "return to their hometown rich and noble", raise their eyebrows and exhale when they go home. So he brought the money home, but Uncle Jiu still stayed in the city. His father took care of everything in the countryside. He bought bricks and tiles at ridiculous prices and built a house. He also bought a field with a well at a ridiculous price. I will be dripping with emotion and feel really proud. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and my father once again used ridiculous and bizarre methods, just like Song Jiang, who was open-minded and generous to entertain friends from all over the world. In the blink of an eye, the tile-roofed house was demolished and sold to sell bricks and tiles. The fields with wells also changed owners. The whole family returned to their original situation. It was at this time and under such circumstances that I was born into the human world.
Of course my mother experienced this huge change herself. Unfortunately, when I lived with my mother, I was only a few years old. Tell me, I don't understand. Therefore, our family's sudden rise and sudden decline this time was just like a flash in the pan. I still don't fully understand it. This mystery may become an eternal mystery.
In any case, our family returned to its previous poverty situation. Later, I heard someone say that our family only had more than half an acre of land at that time. I don’t know where this half-acre of land came from. A family of three lives on more than half an acre of land. Of course Uncle Jiu in the city will give him some help, but something like winning the Hubei Flood Disaster Award is not uncommon once in a lifetime. Uncle Jiu didn't have much money to support his brother.
I am too young to tell how life is at home. Anyway, I eat very badly, I understand this. According to the standards at that time, eating "white" (meaning wheat noodles) was the highest, followed by millet noodles or corn flour pancakes, and the third was red sorghum pancakes, which were red in color, like pork liver. "White" has no connection with our family. The "yellow" ones (millet noodles or stick noodle pancakes are all yellow in color) have little affinity with us. The only people who stay with each other all day long are "red ones". This "red" is bitter and astringent, which is really hard to swallow. But if I don’t eat, I feel hungry again. I really feel a little “red”.
However, children also have their own ways. My grandfather's cousin is a civil servant, and I call his wife grandma. This group of them has money and land. Although Juren died, his family's financial situation was still very good. My great-grandmother is still alive. Her grandson died young, so she poured all her love into me. She is one of the only people in Guanzhuang who can eat "white food". Not only did she eat it herself, but she also left half or a quarter of a white flour steamed bun for me every day. As soon as I open my eyes every morning, I immediately jump off the kang and run to the village. Our family lives outside the village. I ran up to my grandma and shouted crisply and sweetly: "Grandma!" She immediately laughed so hard that she couldn't close her mouth. She retracted her hands into her thick sleeves, took out a small piece of steamed bun from her pocket, and handed it to me. This is the happiest moment of my day.
In addition, I can occasionally eat some "white food", which I earned through my own labor. When the wheat harvest season comes in the summer, our family has no wheat to harvest at all. My aunt and uncle from the Ning family who lived across the street—their family was also very poor—took me to "gather wheat" in the fields of rich people in my own village or other villages. The so-called "gleaning" means that after the long-term workers of other families have cut the wheat, there will always be a few ears of wheat left. These are not worth picking, so we poor people come to "glean". Because there will never be much left, we picked it up for a long time, but we only picked up half the basket. However, for us, this is already a treasure. My aunt and uncle must have taken special care of me. Even a four-, five-, or six-year-old child could pick up ten catties of wheat grains in one summer. These are all made by my mother's own hands. In order to reward me, after the wheat season, my mother would grind the wheat into flour, steam it into steamed buns, or paste it into white flour pancakes to satisfy my craving. So I feasted. I remember one year, my performance in picking up wheat was perhaps a bit "extraordinary". On the Mid-Autumn Festival - what farmers call "August 15th" - my mother got some moon cakes from somewhere and broke a piece for me. I squatted next to a stone and ate it. At that time, for me, mooncakes were really magical things, even dragon liver and phoenix marrow were incomparable. It was rare for me to eat them once. I didn't notice whether my mother was eating too. Looking back now, she didn't even eat a bite. Not only the mooncakes, but also other "white" ones, my mother had never tasted them and left them all for me to eat. She has probably been associated with red sorghum pancakes her entire life. In the year of harvest, you can’t even eat this, so you have to eat wild vegetables.
As for meat, the memory of eating seems to be blank. Next door to my parents' house is a workshop that sells boiled beef. The old oxen that had worked hard for farmers all their lives were no longer able to plow in their old age, so a few farmers bought them at extremely low prices, killed them in extremely barbaric ways, boiled the meat, and then sold it. Old beef is difficult to cook, and there is really no way to do it. The farmers urinate in the meat pot, so that the meat becomes rotten. Farmers are kind-hearted. When this happens, they tell their neighbors: "Don't buy any meat today!" My mother's family is poor. Although she loves my grandson very much, she can only use earthen jars and spend a few coins to fill a jar. Beef soup, better than nothing. I remember one time, there was an extra piece of beef belly in the jar, which became my patent. I couldn't bear to eat it all at once, so I used a rusty little iron knife to cut it piece by piece and eat it slowly. This piece of tripe is really comparable to mooncakes.
"White", moon cakes and tripe are rare, but what about "yellow"? "Yellow" ones are equally rare. But even though I was only a few years old, I figured it out.
In the three seasons of spring, summer and autumn, the grass and crops outside the farm grow. I would go outside the village to cut grass, or go to other people's sorghum fields to split sorghum leaves. Splitting sorghum leaves is not only not forbidden by landowners, but also welcomes it; because once the leaves are split, ventilation can be improved, sorghum can grow better, and more grain can be harvested. Both grass and sorghum leaves are used to feed cattle. Our family was poor and had never raised cattle. My second uncle’s family owns land and often raises two big cows. The grass and sorghum leaves I prepared are for them. Whenever I, a child less than three pieces of tofu tall, walked into the second uncle's door carrying a large bundle of grass or sorghum leaves, I would feel confident and not afraid. I would put the grass in the cow pen and not leave. You can always have a "yellow" meal, and you won't be "scrolled" (in our local dialect, it means "scolded") by the second aunt. When it was time to celebrate the New Year, I felt in my heart that in the past year, I had made a contribution by feeding the cows, and I had the courage to go to the second uncle's house and eat yellow noodle cakes. Yellow noodle cake is steamed with yellow rice noodles and dates. Although yellow in color, it ranks higher than "white". Because it is only eaten once a year during the New Year, and things are rare, yellow noodle cakes have become more expensive.
What I talked about above was all about food. Why do we talk about food when we talk about mother? The reason is not complicated. First, as a child I tended to care about what I ate. Second, almost all the delicious things I mentioned above have nothing to do with my mother. Except for the "yellow" ones, she has nothing to do with them. I only stayed with her until I was six years old. After that, I went home twice for funerals and the time I stayed was also very short. Now that I recall, even my mother's face was blurry, without a clear outline. There is one thing in particular that is difficult for me to understand but easy to understand: I can't recall my mother's smile no matter what. It seems that she has never smiled in her life. Her family is poor, her son is far away, she has suffered so much, where does her smile come from? One time I went home and heard Aunt Ning from across the street tell me: "Your mother often said: 'If I had known that he would never come back after being sent away, I would never let him go no matter what!'" This short sentence contained a lot of meaning. How bitter and sad! The mother didn't know how many days and nights she spent looking into the distance, hoping that her son would come back! However, this son never returned until his mother left this world.
Regarding this situation, I was confused at first and did not understand it deeply. By the time I entered high school, I was a few years older and gradually understood. But I was dependent on others, unable to be financially independent, and had all my ambitions, but I could not realize them. I secretly made up my mind and made a vow: once I graduate from college, I find a job, and I will immediately adopt my mother. However, before I graduated from college, my mother Just left me and left, forever and ever. The ancients said: "The tree wants to be quiet but the wind does not stop; the child wants to be nourished but cannot be kissed." This sentence applies to me. I can't bear to imagine a mother missing her beloved son on her deathbed; just thinking about it makes my heart burst into tears and my eyes fill with tears. When I rushed back to Jinan from Peiping, and then back to Qingping from Jinan for the funeral, I saw my mother's coffin and the simple house. I really wanted to hit my head on the coffin and die with my mother underground. I regret, I really regret, I should never have left my mother. No matter what reputation, status, happiness, or honor in the world, nothing can compare to staying by your mother's side, even if she doesn't know a word, even if she eats "red" all day long.
This is my "eternal regret".
March 5, 1994