The scissors used by my mother were handmade by blacksmiths during the Anti-Japanese War in the thirties of the last century. She cherished her life as much as she cared for her own life, and let that pair of scissors have a history of more than half a century.
From the countryside to the city, she can't forget the beloved scissors;Walking hundreds of miles from the city to the countryside, she carried the scissors in her arms, for fear that she would not find it if she fell on the road.
The mother who never gave up, followed her father and the children to her hometown in Taihang Mountain Village to farm, but she did not complain, even if there were some complaints, she would swallow it into her stomach. In a very difficult environment, the mother carefully used scissors to sew the children's clothes for 20 years. Moreover, in the dead of night, sitting alone under a kerosene lamp sewing and mending. In order to save kerosene, my mother used the chopping wood she had collected to make a fire for lighting.
The mother looks for patches that can be used on old clothes that she can't wear, and she has to use the scissors to make a correct judgment by gesturing in the air, so that the scissors can't be cut in the wrong place. Only by cutting out a patch that could be used with precision would she say to herself, "Okay." How many "okay" she said to herself by herself, none of us as children knows.
What made my mother even more proud was that one after another neighbors and village women, both familiar and unfamiliar, came to her to cut new clothes for their families. If she had gotten the news beforehand, she would have asked my father to sharpen the scissors. Moreover, what makes the people who find her mother to cut clothes full of praise is that as long as her mother has seen those people, she does not need to come to her and measure herself with a ruler, she knows how big the clothes are suitable for the other party to wear, she dares to use white lime as a paintbrush to draw a few times on the cloth, use scissors to cut, and then let the other party take it back and sew new clothes. Her unique skill of cutting clothes was learned in the Xinxiang garment factory. She regards her craft as a spiritual wealth for helping others. As long as the people who came to her came happily and left happily, she would be satisfied.
On November 13, 1979, when we moved from our hometown to Xinxiang City, my mother still took the old scissors with her in her sewing kit before leaving, and refused to let me take them. Perhaps, I was afraid that I would be careless and lose her.
The mother returned to Xinxiang with the old scissors, and after carefully cutting them for her two grandchildren, she sewed warm baby clothes and pants and small bedding. Mother's love is inseparable from the old scissors, and she keeps them in the drawer of the newly bought sewing machine. Although her father bought her a pair of "Wang Mazi" brand-name scissors in Beijing, she is still used to using the hand-beaten scissors. However, I don't know when a neighbor borrowed my mother's old scissors and didn't return them, so my mother had to use "Wang Mazi" scissors. Moreover, my mother often mentioned the beloved old scissors in front of us.
Interestingly, the mother used the old scissors to cut the baby clothes and pants for several neighbors' grandchildren upstairs of the Xinxiang District Industrial and Commercial Bureau, which made the neighbors full of joy. In particular, the tiger head doll shoes made by the mother for the grandchildren of the neighbors made the children very happy. When the children were playing in the yard and shouting "Hello Grandma Guo", the mother was even more proud of herself. (Guo Xilin).