Today is the twenty-third day of the lunar month, time always flies so fast, and in a blink of an eye, it is the small year in the north.
In the countryside of childhood, the small year is a must, and it is also extremely grand, making dumplings and sacrificing to the god of the stove.
In the river of day after day, festivals are like docks moored, which makes the dull days have some ups and downs, and people's emotions have a fulcrum that can be changed.
After the New Year, the atmosphere of the Spring Festival will continue to swell day by day, until it is full of carnival until Chinese New Year's Eve.
With the increase of age and the changes in the surrounding world, I don't know when, I don't know when I have no childhood expectations for the Spring Festival, and with the increasingly strong festive atmosphere, there will always be an inexplicable sentimentality lingering in my heart.
At this time, I often recall the Spring Festival as a child.
When I was a child, every Spring Festival, the busiest person must be my mother.
In the countryside, in addition to the Spring Festival couplets, window flowers must also be pasted.
Twenty or thirty years ago, in the countryside, there were naturally no ready-made window flowers, but you needed to go to the market and buy a large piece of red paper, take it back and cut it into small pieces as needed, and then draw a good figure with a pencil, and then carefully cut it out with scissors, which naturally requires a certain amount of experience and skills, which is not something that ordinary people can master.
My ingenious mother cut the window grilles very well, and in addition to cutting our own window grilles, my mother also had to accept the requests of many families in the village.
A few days before the Spring Festival, villagers often came to my house with rolls of red paper and asked my mother for help.
In the following days, as long as the mother was free, she would immediately sit down at the table, and with the sound of "click", all kinds of blessing characters and lively little animals came out from under the mother's scissors.
When it was time to post the Spring Festival on the afternoon of Chinese New Year's Eve, the windows of many houses in the village were covered with red auspiciousness from their mothers.
In addition to cutting window flowers, my mother's skills in making flower cakes are also excellent.
In our countryside, every married girl must bring the flower cake that her mother made for her in advance when she goes home on the second day of the Lunar New Year and returns to her mother-in-law's house.
The living dough is made into a round flatbread, and then the red jujube is spread on it, and so it goes up layer by layer, and the top layer is to make a variety of beautiful graphics, and then the flowers are written on it.
The bigger and more beautiful the flower cake brought back from her mother's house, the more dignified her daughter will be when she returns to her mother-in-law's house.
But making flower cakes also requires a certain amount of skill, and not every mother with a married daughter can do it independently. I don't know where my mother's skills in cutting window flowers and making flower cakes came from, but she is really proficient in everything.
Therefore, on the eve of the Spring Festival, in addition to helping the villagers cut window flowers, another job of the mother is to help other people's daughters make flower cakes.
And the mother, who has always been warm and kind, is also responsive to all requests.
The red window flowers, the big flower cakes, and the busy figure of the mother have become the most vivid and hot marks in the memory of the Spring Festival in childhood.
Undoubtedly, when I was a child, I was full of expectations for the Spring Festival, and since the beginning of the winter vacation, I have been looking forward to the arrival of the Spring Festival day by day.
Looking forward to the happy red from my mother's hands outside the window in front of the house, looking forward to the sweet fragrance of noodles and jujube wafting in the yard, and looking forward to seeing my mother's busy figure shuttling back and forth between home and village.
For me, it seems that with these, it is the Spring Festival.
This is an indelible obsession that is solidified in a person's bones and soul, and it is a deep memory about hometown, home, and mother.
Today, my mother is over 70 years old and is not in particularly good health.
Mother's window grilles can't be cut, and flower cakes can't be made. Although my siblings followed my mother every day to watch her busy when we were young, we didn't even learn a little, and every time I think of it, I feel a little regretful in my heart.
Wang Shuo said, "I envy those children from the countryside, who always have a hometown in their memories. ”
I guess the same is true for me.
In the memories of the countryside, there are my childhood, my parents when I was young, the bits and pieces of my growth, and the too many moments that I can never go back.
Chinese New Year