Gong Shenghui. After the age of 50, it becomes more and more rare to see your parents.
When the end of the year was approaching, my mother called**, saying that my father was sick and asked me if I would go home for the New Year.
I said, "Yes, I will go back anyway." ”
On the day I went home, I was far away from home, and I saw my father standing at the door and looking this way. Every time we came home, my father would greet us at the door. What is different from the past is that this time my father is on crutches, his body is a lot thinner, and his back is still a little hunched. It seems that my father is really sick.
Watching the children and grandchildren return home one after another and gather together, the father seemed to have taken a dose of panacea, his spirit was much better, he lost his crutches, his waist seemed to be straightened a little, and he played cards with his children and grandchildren with great interest, but his appetite was still not good, and he swallowed a few mouthfuls of food at each meal.
The days of getting together always feel very short. A few days later, it was the last day of the national holiday. In order to stagger the rush hour on the highway, I decided to get up at 5 a.m. to go to work. Every time the children and grandchildren leave home, the old man has to give a gift, telling a few words like "pay attention to your body". So the night before, I said to my parents, "We went on the road early, and my father is not in good health, so you won't send it this time, so let's get some more sleep." ”
The father said, "Okay, be careful when you drive." ”
Early in the morning, in order not to disturb the old man's sleep, I crept to get up and get up, carefully opening the door and closing the car door. When I started the car and looked back at the door, I found my father standing there on crutches and leaning on the door frame, staring at this side with his eyes blank. Seeing that I hadn't started the car for a long time, my father gently raised his hand to me ......
At this moment, I couldn't hold back my tears anymore.
The first time I left home was when I was sixteen. I graduated from high school that year and decided to build a reservoir dozens of miles away. At first, my father didn't let me, saying that I couldn't bear the burden of soil and dams there, and I was tired of work, and my body was thin. I said, tired is tired, but it is considered a strong labor, more than the work earned at home, and the family can spend less. My father sighed, went to the mountains and cut a metasequoia tree, and cut a flat pole for me for several nights, saying that the metasequoia flat pole is tough and soft, and it is labor-saving and shoulder protection. Then I cut back some bamboo, and knitted a basket of earth according to my height, neither tall nor short, so that I would not stumble on the ground, and I would carry it steadily. The day before I went to the reservoir, my father, who never visited the house and didn't like to ask for help, went to the house of the platoon leader of the reservoir migrant workers in the village, and begged them to say: "Our cub is only 16 years old, I'm afraid I can't stand the tiredness on the reservoir, please try to arrange some light work for him." When I went on the road the next day, my father sent him a long way away, holding the hand of a cousin who was walking with me, and kept admonishing: "Your brother is weak, you should always help him a little." ”
After working as a coolie for more than a year, and just after gaining a few pounds of strength, I had the idea of becoming a soldier again. This time, his father, who joined the army in 1950 and participated in the suppression of bandits in southern Xiangnan, not only did not object, but also nodded vigorously and said: "It's good to be a soldier, you are also a descendant of a soldier, so you should go to the army." ”
On that day, I was going to assemble at the Commune's Armed Forces. Suddenly remembering that I was about to leave my parents who gave birth to me and loved me, my younger siblings who accompanied me day and night, and went to a distant place alone, the reluctance came to my heart at once, and I couldn't help but cry in my arms. At this time, my father pulled me out, and said angrily: "Look at you like this, how do you look like a soldier!" You are only sixteen years old when you are a soldier, and you are not as unproductive as you. Our People's Liberation Army sweats, bleeds and does not shed tears, no matter how great the difficulty is, it does not retreat, and it has to bend down and move forward! Besides, the people in the army are all like brothers, why are you crying......”
My father suddenly became so ruthless that I tossed and turned in my bed in the commune guest house all night without thinking about it.
Before dawn the next day, a few of us newly recruited youths got up to eat, boarded the first shuttle bus, and gathered at the armed forces department of the county seat. Just as the car started and I couldn't help but look out the window, I suddenly noticed my father standing under the electric pole tree not far away, looking at me with blank eyes, looking like he had been waiting there for a ......long, long time
After I arrived in the army, in order not to worry my parents, I wrote a letter to my family in half a month. By the beginning of November, the troops suddenly received orders to go to the front, and at the same time cut off the communication of officers and soldiers from the outside world. My father suddenly lost my message, and he was as bewildered as the kite in his hand suddenly broke its string. From his own experience as a soldier, the tension on the southern border revealed by newspapers, and the frequent military vehicles on the national highway next to the village, the father was keenly aware that his son was going to the front. On that day, I don't know where my father heard the news that our troops were going to march to Guangxi through the national highway in their hometown, so they immediately ran to the side of the highway and waited. At that time, the national highway was not paved with asphalt, it was a gravel road, and the car flew into the sky as soon as it passed. The father stood on the side of the road, looking at the military vehicles passing by, hoping to see his son from the car, or let him get out of the car and say a few words when he saw him. My father stood beside the national highway for more than a month, and every day he went home from the sunrise to the sunset. There were no more military vehicles passing by on the national highway, and my father made a trip to the commune's post office every morning and afternoon to ask the postman if he had any letter from me. Fortunately, the troops participating in the war later lifted the communication restrictions, so that my parents received my letter on the 30th day of the Chinese New Year's Eve, and the family had the heart to eat the New Year's meal.
Three years later, when I returned to my hometown for the first time to visit my family, I had already been promoted to platoon commander. My father looked at the military uniform with four pockets on my body, and nodded first: "Yes, better than your old man." Then he exhaled again: "It seems that our father and son are afraid that we will have fewer days together and more time to be apart in the future." ”
Indeed, our father and son have spent more than half a century in the expectation of reunion and parting.
Before the Qingming Festival in 2023, my mother called to say that my father was even sicker. I immediately drove home with a meteor. This time, my father didn't come to meet me at the door. My father was already in bed, and he ate less than during the Spring Festival, and when things were bad, he drank some rice soup.
After accompanying the old man for a few days, I am going back to work in the city again. Early in the morning, I went to my father's bedside to say goodbye to him. He brace himself and try to sit up. I quickly grabbed him on the shoulder and said, "Dad, don't get up." He nodded, his lips moving for a while, before he squeezed out three words: "Don't worry." ”
I wish my father would pick me up at the door every time I came home. When I leave the house, he can go and drop me off again. But when I went home again, I was bidding farewell to his old man, and I never saw him standing at the door with his crutches to greet his children. Every time I think about it, I can't help but cry.
Gong Shenghui is a member of the Chinese Writers Association and vice president of the Hunan Reportage Society. He has published more than 10 novellas, including "China Beidou", "Casting Sword", "Rise in a Decisive Battle", "Towards the Chinese Dream of Strengthening the Army", "China Supercomputing", "The Light of National Defense", "Vicissitudes of Love" and "No Tears in a Desperate Situation", and published more than 10 novellas, such as "Mentor", "Boss" and "Walking with You", and won the 8th Lu Xun Literature Award, the 12th Central Propaganda Department Five One Project Award, the 16th Central Propaganda Department Five One Project Award, the 6th China Outstanding Publication Award Book Award, the 2021 China Good Book Award, Special Prize of the Army's Outstanding Literary and Art Award, etc.
Editor: Zhang Jing].
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