The Spring Festival, going home, has become the most popular word, and it has also become the footsteps of thousands of wanderers returning to their hometowns in a hurry.
Sixteen years ago, on the eve of the Spring Festival, my father died of illness. Since then, I have been home once every two weeks. The winding road home is dozens of miles long, and I go back and forth dozens of times a year. The villages and farmlands on the side of the road quietly change their appearance outside the car window, just like the villages I arrive in every time.
The familiar people in the village are getting older and fewer. At the dinner table, I would inadvertently hear from my mother that those who had called me by my name were sick or dead.
There are more and more unfamiliar faces in the village, young men don't know whose parents are the eldest sons, young girls don't know whose new daughters-in-law they are, and those children who run by in twos and threes don't know whose grandchildren are. People, like crops, ripen and replace in time. Of course, the strangest should be me. The old people's dim eyes could no longer recognize that I was the child in front of them, who had called the name of the nurse one after another; The children who have grown up and are growing up are staring at me as an outsider with curiosity. I suddenly understood the loss and melancholy of He Zhizhang's "Returning to the Hometown Doll Book", "Children don't know each other when they see each other, and they ask where the guests come from". Originally, this was my hometown. Originally, I was the girl who grew up in the village.
Perhaps, from the first time my father carried my bags to the car, I began to drift away from the village, until I became its wanderer.
At the intersection to the east of the town is where the bus is parked, and it has watched me go away and has welcomed me back. Every time I left, my father would wait for the car with me with his bags, and the melancholy of parting accumulated in my heart, until I saw the bus coming from a distance, until I got on the bus, started, and the car drove away, until my father was getting smaller and smaller but still looking at the figure motionless, and those melancholy turned into tears and dripped on his hands. The figure of the father looking at is like a prophecy, waiting in the days to come, becoming a posture of parents. Every time I go home, when the car turns the corner, I see my father standing at the door waiting in the distance. When he sees us, his eyes are always bright, and his joy is overflowing.
As early as my childhood, I knew that waiting for my children to come home was a concern woven by parents with time as a needle and thoughts as threads.
My father's eldest brother, my uncle, left home at a young age and was away alone. Thousands of miles away, he goes home once a year, which is the festival of his grandparents. Grandma and aunt prepared red dates and peanuts early, carefully selected, and carefully bagged. In his letter, he said that on the day of his return, his grandfather began to go in and out early in the morning, and he kept going to the entrance of the village to look, to come back, to sit down, and to get up again, until the figure of his uncle finally entered his eyes, and he suddenly became excited and solemn. During the few days when my uncle was at home, it was lively every day, and relatives and old friends who only came and went on New Year's holidays on weekdays came to the door one after another. The reunion after a long absence, as if they can fold the distance and time between each other, they drink and chat, there is no strangeness, no estrangement, and then say goodbye. In his free time, my uncle would move a small stool to sit in the yard with my grandmother to talk and bask in the sun. In the bright sun, my uncle would trim my grandmother's nails. Grandma sometimes talked about what happened after her death, and talked about the dresses and embroidered shoes she liked in the shop, so my uncle bought them back, and my grandmother carefully hid them in the wooden box that accompanied her when she got married.
Some people say that the meaning of parting is to meet. What about the meaning of the encounter? When my uncle is at home, he always cares about his aunt and a pair of young children who are thousands of miles away. He said that his aunt was virtuous and kind, and that she was a good daughter-in-law. Every time he came home, he would bring with him the clothes and gifts that his aunt had prepared for his grandparents. Later, when I met my aunt and saw the strong feelings between them, I realized that marriage is not just the words of the matchmaker of the parents. When I went back, my uncle would always choose the early morning when it was not dawning. After eating the breakfast made by his grandmother, he carried the things that his grandmother had prepared for him, said "I'm leaving", and walked out of the house alone. The grandmother standing at the door always wiped her eyes with the corner of her clothes wordlessly, watching his back slowly walk out of the alley. At that time, I was thinking, what is parting? Is it the back that is going farther and farther away?
After the uncle left, the family returned to normal life, and the days became dull and peaceful again. A few days later, my uncle's letter would be delivered to my grandfather, and the house would be like a small pebble thrown into the calm water, and the waves would rise slightly. My uncle was a traditional and conservative man, and although he was away from home, he always held himself up as the eldest son. The letters were never sloppy, and every word was never scribbled, and from his envelope, I knew that my village was not called Xitun, but Xisongtun. I just learned that the word "pro-qi" after my grandfather's name has its own weight. At the beginning of the letter, he wrote respectfully each time: "Good parents! ”
After reading my uncle's letter a few times, my grandfather began to write back. He solemnly and dignified wrote down his uncle's scientific name: Guangfu. Say, "Everything is fine at home." Then he began to recount in detail the time of the family after the farewell. The names of the uncle and father both bear traces of the old times, and the words "Fu" and "Zhen" are used respectively. Compared with the solemnity of their names, the names of the aunts are much more casual. Come to think of it, it was the family that gave them deeper expectations. After replying to the letter, the grandfather will treasure the uncle's letter behind the picture frame. I once peeked at it, and there were many envelopes stacked on top of each other, thick, which were the counts of years and the expression of family affection. Sometimes, when people from the village or relatives came to the house to ask about my uncle, my grandfather did not hesitate to take out my uncle's letter and read it, and I guess my grandfather had a little pride and show off in his heart.
The days passed quietly as I received letters, replied to letters, waited, returned home, and left home. One day, my grandmother suddenly fell ill and suffered a cerebral infarction. My father, who had never been very close to his grandfather and grandmother, moved a small stool and sat quietly in front of the hospital bed, his hand kept holding his grandmother's hand, and he kept holding it, refusing to let go. I saw my father, who had always been as hard as iron, secretly weeping. The uncle hurried back and left in a hurry after the grandmother's condition stabilized. Soon after, Grandma got out of bed and walked again, but with an extra cane in her hand. My uncle's letter arrived as scheduled, along with the letter from home, along with the medicine for my grandmother. It is a brown capsule with a soft touch and a faint medicinal fragrance, and the name is "Maitong". In the era of relative scarcity of medicine, my uncle never stopped sending medicine. He can always clearly remember how much of his grandmother's medicine he took and how much he left, and then mailed it in time, and it took more than ten years until his grandmother died.
Later, Grandpa also left. After attending his grandfather's funeral, his uncle no longer came home every year. Occasionally, he would send letters to my father asking about the family and our studies. My father didn't reply as solemnly as my grandfather, and sometimes we would ghostwrite. A few years later, my father was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. The last time he was hospitalized, his father, who was suffering from his illness, told his mother about his uncle and that he wanted to see him. Come to think of it, at that time, he must have felt that his brother was the last support. My father didn't know that my uncle was also suffering from the greatest pain in his life at that time, and his aunt was seriously ill, and he was taking his aunt to seek medical treatment in Beijing. My father didn't have time to go to my uncle, but the next day his condition suddenly deteriorated, and he died in the evening. I don't know how sad my uncle was when he learned of his father's death. The siblings of life, but they didn't have time to see the last side. A month later, my aunt also passed away. After dealing with his aunt's funeral, his uncle dialed the family's **. Mother picked up the microphone, and the two old men, who were in their sixtieth year, looked into the microphone, crying silently. The sea of fish, the mulberry field of silkworms, things are not people, and the drastic changes are only half a year.
In the days that followed, my uncle's ** called from time to time to ask a few words about trivial matters at home, and then told my mother to pay attention to her body. Once, my uncle said in ** that he wanted to go back to his hometown for a few days. It was the last time he came home, and the longest he ever stayed. He stayed at my house for a few days, eating rice porridge and dumplings made by my mother, visiting his old friends from his youth, and staying at his aunt's house for two days each. He was saying his final goodbye to his hometown, to all the ties related to his hometown. He knew that after all these years, this land and his relatives here could only appear in dreams. After returning home, my uncle passed away in just two years. Perhaps, it was because he missed his deceased aunt too much; Or perhaps, in this world, he has no nostalgia. His uncle's ashes were not buried in his home village, and he chose to stay with his aunt where they lived together. Once, his hometown and distance have always pulled his footsteps and emotions. Eventually, the distant land became home.
Unlike my uncle, who left home at a young age, we are a runaway generation, a generation that has been officially cut off from our hometown. The tide of the times has impacted the traditions, concepts, lifestyles and experiences of the countryside, and even more so to our hearts. We are tired of the seemingly immutable life in the countryside, and tired of the future that can be seen at a glance, so we bravely run away, out of the countryside and life where our ancestors lived, and run to the city, to the unknown distance and dreams. We strive to put down roots and strive to distance ourselves from the place where we grew up. Finally, my hometown became literature. We have become wanderers.
In my mother's mobile phone, our sibling's ** is ranked at the top of the **thin. She doesn't often call us **, and occasionally she will hit ** when something delays going home, and asks me euphemistically when I will go home, is it to wrap dumplings or pancakes?