Text|Canghai (Wuhan) Oral Description: Lin Yun (Wuhan).
In the blink of an eye, it was the Spring Festival again, and I was born in the 70s and I had spent two difficult years alone after my wife left. My name is Lin Yun, a native of Wuhan, and I have now retired for many years and live alone.
My wife and I were both born and raised in Wuhan, and we grew up in a family home. My parents, and her parents, in different workshops in the same factory, are also considered workers.
I'm 2 years older than her, we live on the 2nd floor, her house lives on the 3rd floor, and when I was a kid she always joked that she had been stepping on my head and was going to step on it for the rest of her life. At that time, I didn't understand what she meant by "for the rest of my life", and I stupidly said that we wouldn't live in this small dilapidated building for the rest of our lives.
Until she graduated from junior high school, she secretly gave me a letter one night, can you believe it, she usually writes 800 words of essays, and she wrote a letter of 5,000 words to me.
On that day, the factory showed an open-air movie, and most of the people in the family courtyard went to watch the movie, and there were not many people left in the courtyard. My parents also went, but I didn't go because I was addicted to Gu Long's martial arts** and was seeing a wonderful peak showdown.
Just as I was fascinated, she pushed the door in, opened it herself with the key in the flower bed, threw me the letter and left. When I opened the envelope, there were several paper cranes folded very cutely, and I could smell the smell of fruit candy.
She is not good at studying, but she writes well, more than 5,000 words, telling the ignorant feelings of a teenage girl. The content in it is shy, bold, and numb, and when I think about it now, I can't help but have a warm current floating in my heart.
That's right, she confessed to me, saying that she liked me as a big brother, and she was afraid that I would be snatched away by other girls when I got to college, so she confessed to Qiang first. I remember very well that the end of her letter was written like this:
If you are willing to let me step on your head for the rest of your life and accompany you through your life, then you will knock on my door, knock three times to mean that you agree, and knock four times to represent that you do not agree. ”
Although I was already a sophomore in high school at that time, I was also very ignorant about love, but I also liked this little sister who had followed me since I was a child, so I almost didn't hesitate, I ran to her house in a few seconds, knocked on the door three times, and then ran back home.
When I got home, I put my ear to the door and listened to see if the door was open.
With the sound of the heavy security door opening, I heard her open the door, and then she happily shouted in the corridor
I heard it, it was three knocks! ”
Yes, that's right, from that day on, we were in love, no, to be precise, puppy love.
Because of that confession letter, I often said later that she was chasing me, and she was embarrassed to admit this, especially later in front of the children, she had to reply to the letter unless I confessed first.
By the way, I sent that letter to her on the Qingming Festival in the first year of her death.
After all, that letter carries the beginning of our love, and when she is alone there, she can take it out and look at it and smile.
When we post-70s students go to school, in the eyes of schools and parents, early love is a very serious topic, and once discovered, there is even a risk of being dropped out of school.
So, even though there were puppy lovers around us at the time, the secrecy was done quite well, and we deliberately didn't say hello when we met on the road.
However, she and I don't have to avoid it so much, because we grew up together, and the neighborhood relationship between going up and down the stairs has long been a brother and sister relationship in the eyes of outsiders. She has a younger brother, and I don't know why she doesn't want to play with him, so she likes to play with me.
Therefore, although we are in early love, we are still tired of being together as always, going to and from school together, going to the open-air movies together, and eating popsicles together at the gate of the family home.
She has a quirky personality and often thinks of unexpected ways to "trick" me, and every time, I am deeply intoxicated by her little pranks.
For example, when I wasn't looking, she would put a picture of a "turtle" on my school bag, write my name next to it, and draw a big arrow from my name to the turtle, meaning that I was a turtle.
For example, when I was resting on the steps, she would suddenly pull one of my shoes away and watch me jump on one foot and beg her for shoes.
In short, the time of our early love was very happy and sweet.
Her mother's cooking skills are very good, especially their beef buns, which also add tofu that I like to eat, and it is estimated that there is no such way to wrap in the world.
So, as long as the steamed buns are steamed at home, when I go to school in the morning, she will bring me 4 big beef buns, which are specially heated when I go out in the morning. As a bonus, I will use a thermos cup with two cups of hot soy milk, the kind I make at home.
When she didn't have steamed buns at home, we would go to the door to eat a bowl of hot dry noodles, or a noodle nest and eggnog.
I remember one year when the school held a sports meeting, I signed up for a 1500-meter run because I was a child, but I didn't expect that when the run started, two students from the organizing committee ran over and said that the number of people running the 5000-meter run was not enough, so I asked me to help and try to run 5000 meters.
I originally wanted to refuse, because I knew my strength, and I usually run 1500 meters, and I haven't run 5000 meters yet, so I'm afraid I won't be able to finish it. At this point, she ran over, tied in a double ponytail, and jumped over to inquire what was going on.
After learning the reason, she suddenly grabbed my hand and said to me loudly: "Brother, you can do it, come on, just run 5,000 meters and try." ”
The classmates from the organizing committee next to me probably thought she was my sister, and they also echoed me and asked me to try, and said that I only need to run, not necessarily finished, and how many meters can I run, so as to help them carry out this competition.
With her encouragement, my little bit of boyish self-esteem came up, and I went straight up to run the 5,000 meters.
To be honest, for me, who is used to running 1,500 meters, 5,000 meters is really difficult. So, I came up with a clever idea, which was that I thought of 5,000 meters as about six 800 meters, plus one 200 meters. The 800m is not difficult for me, so it is a little easier to accept mentally.
And so I started my first 5,000-meter run. After the start of the run, I started to run the 800m sprint at the length of the 800m playground, and then adjusted a little and started running the next 800m. The other students next to him ran slowly, reserving their energy to sprint on the last lap.
Maybe in their eyes, my way of running is funny, because very few people run a sprint at the end of the first lap of the 5,000-meter run.
What I didn't expect was that in the end, I actually ran a third-place student, and the top two sports students.
After the game, I was also so tired that I lay down in the stands next to me and wanted to rest. She walked over and covered me from the sun with her school uniform, and fed me the popsicles she had already bought.
At that moment, we knew that such a move might be discovered by someone to be in early love, but that day it was as if we didn't care about anything, just chatting so closely.
During the winter and summer vacations, the two of us would ride our bicycles and go to various universities to hang out and climb mountains. Friends from other places may not know that several well-known universities in Wuhan have mountains in them. Such as Yujia Mountain in Huagong, Luojia Mountain in Wudali, Nanwang Mountain in Didali, Guizi Mountain in Huashi, Lion Mountain in Huanong, and Snake Mountain in Caida.
We have all climbed these mountains, there were no mobile phones or game consoles at that time, and the entertainment when we were in love was to climb the mountains and go to spring.
Later, during the college entrance examination, I was admitted to Huagong with normal performance, and she played extraordinarily and was admitted to the University of Earth, and the schools of the two of us were next to each other, only separated by a door.
When we got to college, we started to fall in love openly. At this time, we learned that it turned out that the parents of both sides had already seen it, and they also wanted us to be together and know the roots, so they never debunked it.
After graduating from university, we both naturally stayed in Wuhan to work, and after 3 years of love, we finally entered into marriage hand in hand under the guidance of our parents.
In order to let me eat my mother-in-law's kind of beef buns every day, she deliberately studied for a long time, and finally made beef buns at the same level as her mother.
I knew that she didn't like oil fumes and couldn't touch water with her hands, so I didn't like to go to the kitchen, so I spent 100 yuan to sign up for a chef class and learned how to fry good home-cooked food. So, from being in my 20s when I got married to retiring, I have been cooking the family's meals for decades, and I have no complaints about this, to be precise, very happy.
In this way, she and I supported each other for decades of life, and in the blink of an eye, we both reached the age of retirement. Since the unit has its own arrangement, in order to create opportunities for young people, the two of us went through the internal retirement and started to retire early.
As for the life after retirement, the two of us have made detailed plans, basically based on travel. The two of us don't want to go abroad, and we want to go through the great rivers and mountains in China, and we will be content.
So, in recent years, we have been to the Northeast, Hainan, Guangxi, and **, in short, no less than 20 trips.
However, one day in January 2022, after waking up in the morning, she suddenly coughed badly and took some medicine, but it didn't work. The next day, I didn't feel right and immediately sent her to the hospital for a check-up, which turned out to be severe pneumonia.
At that time, we thought that even if it was pneumonia, hospitalization** would be fine, but who would have thought that the situation would take a turn for the worse on the third day of hospitalization, and she left this world in the intensive care unit before she had time to say goodbye to us.
Every time I look back on the days when she was seriously ill, I regret it. I always wonder if I had taken her to the hospital in the morning when she first started coughing, instead of the next day, if she would have been resuscitated.
This guilt has been wandering in my heart and has not dissipated to this day.
When my wife was still there, we were still discussing many plans, such as selling the old house in the city center, changing to a small stacked house outside the third ring road, raising a cat, and planting flowers. But now, I don't want to toss anything, I just want to continue living in the house where she has lived for decades.
A few times, I met my high school classmates on the street, and they all said, why do you suddenly have so many gray hair, and you are a lot older, and you don't look like the post-70s, like the post-60s.
When I told them that my wife was gone, they sighed and comforted me that I must live well, for my wife's sake, because she could see it, and hoped that I could continue to live well.
My wife left in January 2022 and passed away before the Spring Festival. Now it's the Spring Festival of 2024, time flies so fast, and she has left me for two years in a blink of an eye.
During the Spring Festival, I met my brother-in-law on the street, and he waved to me from afar, but when I saw his similar face to my wife, I turned my head away and didn't dare to recognize each other.
Because the moment I saw him, my longing for my wife poured out again, and it was the kind of tears that poured out, and I couldn't help it at all. If I knew each other, he would definitely think of her sister when he saw me crying, and both of them would cry. Therefore, I chose to turn around and leave, and wait until my mood calmed down another day to explain to him.
Note: The first time I told my story like this, there are still a lot of things I want to say that I haven't said, at this time, I am on the other side, and my tears are uncontrollable, so let's stop here. After the Spring Festival, when I have time, I will share the story of my wife and me. At the same time, I am also grateful to this channel, and I am willing to listen to an old man born in the 70s talk about his experience through dictation and text.