During the New Year's holidays, parents always quarrel.
When I was a child, I loved the holidays. I often count the festivals with my fingers. After the New Year, it is the second of February, counting down, the Dragon Boat Festival, August 15, and then the small year and the big year.
The reason for looking forward to the festival is to have delicious food. At that time, the days passed too slowly, and there was a gap of two or three months between each festival. The interval between the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Spring Festival is longer. Fortunately, there is another first day of the tenth lunar month in the middle. Now we know that it is called "Winter Clothes Festival", and we are going to eat fritters in the morning. At least it's a small improvement.
No matter what the festival, the children will be happy, and the parents don't know why, they will always say a few words, so that the originally happy mood suddenly drops, and they no longer dare to squeak, they can only secretly observe the faces of their parents. Even if life improves, the original happiness is lost!
I look forward to the festival, but I am afraid of the festival. The most worrying and fearful thing is the quarrel between parents.
Every festival, especially the Chinese New Year. I will pray in my heart: God willing, parents don't quarrel anymore during the holidays, even if they eat less delicious food, don't quarrel anymore.
However, whatever you are afraid of, you will come. Every Chinese New Year, there don't seem to be many years when parents don't quarrel.
I remember the year when the quarrel was the worst, to the thirtieth of the Chinese New Year's Eve, the parents started from the quarrel at the beginning, and finally the two sides moved.
As soon as I entered the lunar month, I heard my mother nagging that she should add clothes to the children this year. I have five brothers and sisters. With a standard of living a few decades ago, it was difficult to add a new dress to every child.
At that time, even if new clothes were added, it was not to buy ready-made clothes as now, but the mother kept the labor insurance benefits that she and her father received every year (at that time, it was called labor cloth, and the color of the cloth was similar to today's denim) until the end of the year to make clothes for the children.
There is not enough cloth for one per person. Mothers need to balance between their children. Reach every child with something new.
That year, I made a pair of pants for my sister. Bought me a pair of nylon socks.
I put my new socks under my pillow and take them out from time to time. With these socks on my pillow, I fell asleep and looked forward to wearing them on the morning of New Year's Day.
Happiness was simple then. But I just don't understand why my parents quarrel and even fight. Didn't understand what was really going on between the parents.
It was also very snowy that year. Just like this year, it didn't hit for two days. But it's definitely colder than this year.
There is no heating in the house, and the burning of coal is planned. Almost every kitchen has a coal stove and ten pots.
Outside the house, the eaves were hung with ice more than a foot long. It's freezing.
Chinese New Year is a busy and happy time for every family. In order to please my parents, and also to share the housework for my mother, so that my parents could be happy, my sister and I competed for work.
There was no running water in the kitchen, and the water pipes in the yard were freezing again, so we boiled a few pots of boiling water and poured them on.
In the cold and snow, laundry in the yard, shopping for vegetables. When his hands were frozen, he put his hands into the armpits to warm them and continue to dry. Now think about it, how difficult it is for parents.
Early in the morning of the Chinese New Year's Eve, my mother was busy cleaning up the dumpling filling, while my father was cooking meat in the kitchen.
This is when we are most excited. A few of us sisters would gather around the fire, staring at the boiling pieces of meat in the pot, and the fragrant smell was still fresh in my memory.
From time to time, my father would take out the bones and hand them to us, gnawing on the bones in his mouth, and happiness would ripple in his heart.
In the afternoon, when it was supposed to make dumplings and prepare the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner (the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner at that time was actually to eat dumplings), the parents quarreled for some reason, and according to the custom, as long as one of them did not say anything first, it was the end.
But that time, neither of them gave in, and gradually escalated, not only dropping things, but also moving their hands. In the meantime, my sister and I cried and argued, but to no avail. In the end, the neighbor aunt in the backyard came to persuade her, and the war ended temporarily.
The fight was not noisy, but the parents each lay in bed and shivered.
On the evening of the Chinese New Year's Eve, the cold pot and cold stove not only did not smell of the year, but the air at home was suffocating.
Several of us sisters were huddled in bed, cold and hungry, and afraid to come out.
The sound of firecrackers on the morning of the first day of the new year woke us up.
My sister grabbed me, tiptoed into the kitchen, pulled out the coal stove, and cooked a big pot of gnocchi soup for everyone, and the dish was a steamed bowl of radish balls.
This is our first day of the new year. My sister was fourteen and I was twelve.
When my mother heard the movement, she quickly got up and went to the kitchen, and when she saw the busy figures of our sisters, her eyes were red.
It is said that the children of the poor are in charge of the house at an early age. Dad is away from home all the year round, my mother is weak, and there is no one to help her, and my sister has long been able to share the housework for her mother. When I was in junior high school, I would steam steamed buns and roll noodles.
On the second day of the Lunar New Year, I began to visit relatives. We all scrambled to go. There were no bicycles or buses, and we all relied on walking, but fortunately they were only a dozen miles away, and we had a reason to hide in a relative's house and not come back.
The Spring Festival of that year left a deep memory for me.
The shadow of childhood takes a lifetime to **.
Years later, I asked my mother many times what had happened.
There were many quarrels, and my mother struggled to think about it, but she didn't come up with a reason.
I guess the main reason is that my father has been working outside for many years and is used to spending money lavishly, and my father pays great attention to the sense of ritual of the New Year, such as buying New Year's goods, and would rather do more than just make do with it.
The father would give part of his salary to the mother every month to pay for the family's expenses.
My mother dragged five of us brothers and sisters, and we were used to living a frugal life, and we couldn't do it if we weren't thrifty. Of course, I can't tolerate my father's extravagance. This did not meet the ideal standard of the father's holiday, and they quarreled back and forth.
It happened that my aunt was hospitalized in childbirth before the Spring Festival that year, and my mother squeezed out some money from the living expenses to help my aunt. This makes life even more difficult.
Poor couples mourn everything. They don't want to quarrel either.
The parents of the year, who worked hard for a year, had problems with eating and dressing, and looked at the children who were waiting to be fed, would they be in a good mood?
When we became adults, we had our own families, and every festive season, we would prepare enough holiday supplies in advance and send them back to let our parents have a fat holiday.
February** Dynamic Incentive Program