Like most people who have come through difficult times, my mother was very respectful and cherished for food. In her memory, a porridge and a meal are not only a porridge and a meal, but also a life. During the starving years of her childhood, she had seen too many examples of those who ate and those who did not die. These memories are so deeply engraved in her genes that they played a decisive role in every period of her formative years.
The incident I want to talk about happened in the mid-70s of the 20th century, when although the material ** was also tight, but it was no longer starved to death, and the mother at this time had two sons, the eldest was five years old, and the younger brother was more than a year old. In the eyes of a mother at this time, food is the most real and genuine love for her sons. She, like many mothers, would rather eat less for herself than for her son to go hungry, no!To be precise, he would rather be hungry than let his sons be unsatisfied. In my childhood memory, whenever the family ate meat, my mother always chose a meatless bone to gnaw on, just like the mother who always grabbed the meatless fish head in the classic story "Mom Only Loves to Eat Fish Heads". It wasn't until I became a father many years later that I realized the mystery.
But the mouth stealing incident happened at this time.
That year, a new colleague came to my mother's cigar factory, and this aunt was called Aunt Qing, because she lived on the same street as my family, so she naturally went to work with my mother, and the story happened on the third day of their walk.
The factory is in the northeast of the town, and the home is in the northwest of the town, and the running path happens to pass through the city. At that time, although there were no hawkers or self-employed people, the only few state-run stores in the county were on their way: the sour-scented rice noodles in the rice noodle shop, the spicy soup in the snack shop, the beef and fat sausages in the steamer that towered to the eaves of the comprehensive canteen, the steamed dumplings and peanuts on the fragrant and yellow oil tea at the entrance of the workers' and peasants' teahouse, and the stewed noodles cooked in a large pot temporarily set up at the entrance of the civilized store, the sticky and fragrant braised noodles and soup under the crispy ringy balls and green onions, as well as the brown sugar pastries and lollipops that can only be bought with tickets in the 38 non-staple food store, all like cute stunners, using all its charm to seduce people's taste that is not much oil and water and often has crazy imagination.
For people who only eat a little food with one dish a day and only eat one meal of meat for about half a month, this fragrance is both ** and torture. Especially when the money in the pocket does not match the desire in the intestines, it is even more uncomfortable.
On the street where the aroma and ** came and went, Aunt Qing proposed to eat something. Although my mother also wanted to, she was a little reluctant to think that she had only earned four or five cents in the morning. Moreover, eating out alone behind her family's back is something she has never done in her nearly 30 years of life. As a poor woman, from the age of seven or eight, she had been scooping a handful of rice from her rice bowl to feed her at the end of the month, and this kind of eating alone outside was completely inconsistent with her morals, especially since she had become a mother of two children.
Aunt Qing is a person who is good at doing ideological and political work, and after listening to her mother's words, she told a story, saying that during the "food lock" period, there were two families in her hometown, one parent gave all the food allocated to the child, while the other parent took care of himself and then took care of the child. In the end, the parents of the former family died, and the children naturally did not get better, while the latter family was preserved. From this, it can be concluded that adults eat for themselves, and it is not entirely for themselves.
This joke, which I don't know if it was true or for the sake of reassuring her mother's heart, did play a role in making her relax her vigilance, and at this time, they happened to walk to the hot brine stall of the county food factory.
Pork ribs, pig's trotters, tails and water are boiled in a hot marinated soup pot. These adorable little creatures are boiled in a marinade of rock sugar, soy sauce and spices until they are golden brown, fluffy and fragrant. This colorful and fragrant scene, coupled with Aunt Qing's ideological and political work, completely destroyed the mother's last line of defense. She finally couldn't help it, took out 8 cents and half a catty of meat tickets, and partnered with Aunt Qing to buy a shiny pig's trotters.
Half a pig's trotter wrapped in a lotus leaf, like a beautiful work of art, against the background of green, the white bones and transparent hoof tendons are wrapped in a layer of golden flesh, exuding a faint fragrance, like a treasure just taken out of the fairy cave, people's stomach, can't help but spasm, I can't help but stretch out a hand immediately, put it into the abdomen, directly through the mouth and tongue and teeth, even the bones do not vomit.
Aunt Qing almost did this, picked up the pig's trotters, went to a deserted electric pile behind the stall, turned her back to the street, and devoured it. Obviously, she is a veteran, and she looks like she is familiar with the road, and after a while, she killed the half of the pig's trotters, not only chewed the bones to a thin extent, but also licked the marinade and oil and water on the lotus leaves.
My mother, however, was far from being so chic and comfortable, she was holding the pig's trotters, but she felt like she was in a hurry to find a toilet in the market, and she felt inappropriate to look for it in the east, and she felt uncomfortable in the west, and all the people on the street, including the pig's head on the braised meat stall, seemed to be laughing at her, making her feel that she had written two big words on her forehead - stealing her mouth.
In fact, the bazaar is still the same bazaar, and people are busy with their own business, and they don't have time to deal with this woman who is holding a pig's trotter and is tormented by her own inner values. This made the mother's mood relax a little, and she timidly and cautiously gnawed on the pig's trotters. It was the first and only time in her life that she had eaten something good before her family, and it was she who felt sorry and unforgivable for stealing it.
The bite was not so much a pig's trotter as it was a bite off a balloon full of shame, shame and self-blame, instantly spread all over her body, the tooth marks left on the pig's trotters seemed to be laughing at her, making her uneasy, so that she could not take a second bite, so that she couldn't help but leave Aunt Qing and run home quickly. At noon that day, everyone in our family had a fragrant pig's trotter in their steaming rice bowls, and no one found a tooth mark as my mother feared.
After that, the mother never went with Aunt Qing again, but occasionally saw Aunt Qing's back to the street gobbling back, she also saw Aunt Qing's husband in the same posture, and also heard Aunt Qing's son steal things for food, and never go home after eating. She felt that the family should not be like this. She was also secretly glad that the pig's trotter was not finished.
This incident was told to my mother on my 47th birthday, and although more than 40 years have passed, my mother's guilt is still overflowing, at this time, our whole family has broken off from pig's trotters due to blood lipids, but everyone still mourns for three minutes for the pig's trotters that have been blocked in my mother's chest for nearly half a century.