Today is the eighth day of the 11th lunar month, my brother's 41st birthday. Dinner was held at the Shengshi Tea Capital Longfeng Restaurant in the Southern District, and about 30 people from the two families celebrated his birthday together. Time flies! The scene of his birth 41 years ago is still vivid, and it has been more than 40 years in the blink of an eye. He is already a father of three.
The younger brother was born on November 8, 1982. I was eleven years old at the time, and I was in the fifth grade at Wenxi. Because his mother gave birth to five daughters before giving birth to a son, the people of the village came to the house to say Mao Xi the day after he was born. At that time, we were still living in Majiawan, and that night I was not at home at school for Xi, and I heard that it was very lively, and the firecrackers were set off in the middle of the night. My mother's friend, our neighbor, was surrounded by firecrackers and didn't come out for a long time. At that time, people didn't have a sense of security, and they deliberately intercepted her inside with a joking mentality. When she came out, she told everyone that she had leaned her face against the wall and covered her ears tightly with her hands so that she was not blinded and deaf by the explosion. At the time, everyone thought about it as a joke, but now that I think about it, it's really suspenseful.
Lao Wu was not yet three years old at the time, and he cried in fright when he saw a group of men using oil and ink to paint his father's face like the bottom of the pot. Dad didn't dare to hug her.
When I shared these scenes with my classmates, I was attacked by one of the female classmates: "Your parents are patriarchal, and you raise so many girls just to raise one boy." ”
I was surprised at the time, because most of us didn't have this awareness, and it was the norm to have a lot of children in the family at that time, and it was normal for a boy to have a girl in the family, and a girl in the family to have a boy.
I said, "My mom and dad don't have a preference for sons!" ”
She said: "If you don't have a preference for sons, why do you just give birth to a boy and everyone sets off firecrackers?" Why didn't you let them go when you gave birth to your sister? ”
I said, "It's not my mom and dad who want to put it, it's someone else's own!" ”
She glanced at me disdainfully: "People just know that they are patriarchal." It's not patriarchal yet! ”
Her words hit me hard at the time. If you think about it carefully, although she was born in the same rural area as us, her mother is a teacher, her father is a worker, and her education is more comprehensive than ours, and their family is only her and her younger brother, and the love given by her parents should be more concentrated, so her gender awakening to patriarchy is also earlier than ours.
Since then, I have avoided her when I share my brother's anecdotes with my classmates.
When my younger brother was born, my father burned charcoal with my third uncle at Tangxi's third aunt's maiden house. My mother was a tailor and made clothes at an uncle's house in Shuikoushan. In November, there is a lot of urgency. They all wore new clothes and went to their relatives' houses to eat and drink. Mom was busy until the middle of the night before coming home. After arriving at home for a while, he gave birth to the sixth child alone.
When the grandfather heard the child's cry, he thought it was a wild cat barking, and shouted to his mother in the other house: "It's a wild cat, don't be afraid." He drove outside: "Instigation, instigation—" until the mother shouted, "Hey! You go and help me call for a blessed sister-in-law! Grandpa only knew that his mother was born, so he hurriedly went to call Uncle Youfu.
When Uncle Fu saw that it was a boy, she immediately said hello to her grandfather, and her grandfather was very happy. I quickly took some eggs out of the jar and beat them for my mother. It was a bloody egg, which Grandpa secretly saved for his mother.
Mom gave birth to a younger brother, and Dad still didn't know about it in Tanshan. The next day, Grandpa invited his father's niece, son-in-law, Hu Sheng's brother, to Tangxi to call Dad back. Brother Hu Sheng is a person who doesn't like to talk much, and after arriving in Tangxi, he said: "Uncle, my aunt raised Maomao and wants you to go back." "Because my father had given birth to five daughters in a row, although he hoped to have a boy, he didn't have much hope. Seeing that Hu Sheng's brother didn't make a special explanation, he acquiesced in his heart that he had given birth to a daughter again.
Dad packed up his things and followed Hu Sheng's brother home. When he arrived at Yangshan Pass, which was not far from home, Hu Sheng's brother suddenly burst out with a sentence: "Uncle, Ang Ang (boy) raised by aunt." ”
Dad looked at Brother Hu Sheng in disbelief, wondering why he didn't talk earlier when he was on the mountain, and he would talk about it when he got to the door, would he lie to himself. But I feel that Brother Hu Sheng is not a person who likes to joke, and he is separated from him by generations, so he should not be willing to tell lies.
Uncle Li Kai of Yangshanao listened to Brother Hu Sheng's words, and hurriedly sent congratulations to my father: "Brother Mingshan, congratulations on raising cubs, I hope that Mo Nai finally saw it." ”
Dad hurried home, and my brother was sleeping soundly under the covers. Dad whispered to Mom, "Is it really Aung Aang?" Mom nodded smugly: "Yes." "Dad went on to do something else.
When we talked about it later, my mother still felt aggrieved, "I told him about the birth of Angang, and he turned around to do things without looking back, without even looking at the child." ”
I said that he must have been forcibly suppressing his excitement, he was so happy that he forgot to look at the child.
Dad said that Hu Sheng is really funny, that patience is good, the men who don't talk about the birth all the way are still women, and they don't talk about it until Yangshan Pass.
I said yes, and you were weak when you walked all the way back. If you had told me earlier, you would have come back from a somersault.
Dad said that he was afraid that he would give birth to another girl, if you don't talk about it, you are afraid that I won't come back, and tell me again when I go to Yangshan Pass, anyway, when I get to the door of the house, I can only come back, so it can be understood. gave birth to a boy, and never talked about it, and only said it when he got to the door: "Raise Angang." "It's really funny.
I said, he wants to test you, and the girl he gave birth to will see you come back?
Dad is really not patriarchal among the men in the village. There was a man who also gave birth to four daughters in a row. When he was born to the fourth, he was asked, "Did your wife raise her?" He returned to the house angrily: "The person who raised him is not a beast?!" My dad was still smiling when he went to my grandparents' house to announce the good news after the fifth child was born.
He has the idea of passing on the family lineage, and he is unwilling to stop giving birth without giving birth to a son. He was originally the first barefoot doctor trained by the brigade in the 1970s, but after the fourth child was born, because the brigade leaders asked him to take the lead in implementing family planning, he would rather give up his job as a barefoot doctor and continue to have children. His parents died early, and the three brothers died young and never married, and the task of inheriting the family line fell on him alone.
Mom is also very cooperative with him, Mom has been held in the palm of her hand by her grandparents since she was a child, but she envies the lively family atmosphere of many brothers and sisters in other people's families. After giving birth to the fourth child, because others wanted to exchange her son for her, her competitiveness was stimulated: "Maybe they didn't expect that I wouldn't be able to raise a son in my life?" I'm going to raise one for you to see! “
Sure enough, where there is a will, there is a way, and after giving birth to five daughters, my mother finally gave birth to a boy.
The boy who finally came to him was very cautious in choosing a name, and he brainstormed for a long time, but he didn't have a unified idea for a long time. When Dao Mao was happy, the name given by others was Double Happiness, which meant the joy of Jiang Chen's two families. This name has a duplicate name in the village, and the county is not atmospheric enough. It didn't work. Later, I thought that I had the same name as the second child, and the third and fourth children had the same name, and I wanted my younger brother's name to be the same as the fifth child, and the fifth child was called Huijun, and I wanted to name him to march into the army, but I learned that my father once had a younger brother named Jinshan, and when he was nineteen years old, he died of a sudden illness, so he had to give up.
In some hesitation, the younger brother slowly grew up, and when he was almost a year old, his name had not yet been decided. Before the name is decided, we always have to call him, so let's call him Maomao. By the time he finally got his big name right, everyone had become Xi to the nickname Mao Mao, and the three characters of Chen Zhongyuan were only used to write down in his homework book after he went to school. So many years later, the neighbor received a ** looking for Chen Zhongyuan, and the neighbor's aunt said, we don't have Chen Zhongyuan here. Our neighbors only know my brother's nickname, Mao Mao.
When my younger brother was born, my father was thirty-nine years old, and according to rural parlance, he was forty years old. They both have November birthdays. My brother is on the eighth day of November, and my father is on November 29. The younger brother is 41 years old this year and has also welcomed his three sons.
The younger brother belonged to an overborn child, and he was originally fined, because his mother took the initiative to sterilize him after giving birth to him, and received a nutritional subsidy, so he was punished with a reward.
My brother's son is the third child, and if he had been born a few years earlier, he would have been a superchild. But now that the third child has been released, many cities have introduced incentives.
As the only boy in the family, the younger brother has no arrogant Xi, is humble and polite, works conscientiously and conscientiously, is filial to the elders, and has a harmonious family.
Mom and Dad still didn't look forward to him in vain.
A family of four
Little.