When my mother was very young, she took on more than 50% of the housework and labor in the family.

There are many brothers and sisters in the family. In those days, after the older generation brought up the first two children, the older children were responsible for the growth of the rest of the siblings.

My mother's mother, my grandmother, continued to carry on the work of inheritance—pregnancy, childbirth, confinement.

When my mother was seven or eight years old, she took on the responsibility of raising her younger siblings. Therefore, the mother also experienced the hard work of raising children and the taste of "sister and mother" early.

My mother completed junior high school on and off as a child.

Why is the word choppy used to describe it?

Teaching conditions in rural areas are poor, and families are poor and cannot afford to pay school fees. When my mother was young, she just listened to lectures outside the window of the school classroom, taking her younger siblings. How much like a bridge in a movie.

Later, the teacher saw that she was pitiful, so she asked her mother to listen to the lecture in the classroom.

When my younger siblings cry, they take them out and coax them. Coaxed it, stopped crying and continued to listen to the lecture in the classroom.

Even so, my mother's grades in elementary and junior high school were particularly good, and she always came out on top in all subjects. Of course, even in junior high school, there are only two courses: Chinese and mathematics.

After graduating from junior high school, due to her excellent grades, her mother stayed in school directly and became a junior high school teacher.

At that time, there was no high school, most people were uneducated, and few graduated from junior high school, and my mother was one of them. Then it is to enter the society, get married and have children.

When my mother was young, she was indeed a great beauty and an intellectual.

It is inevitable to mention the social background of the time.

Mother was born in the early 50s of the 20th century, not long after the founding of New China, my mother's childhood growth experienced 10 years of particularly difficult period, "not enough to eat, not warm to wear" became synonymous with that period, my mother's grandfather was starved to death in those 10 years.

The phenomenon of not being able to raise children and passing on their children to other people also happened from time to time, and the same thing happened to my beloved grandfather, who was passed on to a landlord's family as a long-term laborer; it was not uncommon for "children to be exchanged for food"; and even worse, the phenomenon of "people eating people" even appeared in some places. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that my mother lived a life of eating grass roots and gnawing tree bark when she was a child.

At that time, my grandfather was the only labor force in the family.

Collective ownership is based on the division of work. Distribution according to work, more work, less fishing, less is most vividly reflected at that time.

Distribution varies across the country. The work score is low in spring and autumn, and the work score is high in summer.

It is distributed according to the different physical strength consumed by the working body and different genders.

In spring and autumn, an adult male laborer earns 9-11 cents per day. Earn 11-13 points a day in the summer. Women have two points less than men in the adult labor force. Temporary work is distributed according to the length of work and the amount of physical energy consumed.

Before the winter, 10 jobs are converted into "one work", which is equivalent to 5-6 cents. The more you earn, the more you will get at the end of the year. Those who earn less also have less.

For a large family of nine, the food rations allocated are simply not enough to last for a year.

After my mother stayed in school and became a junior high school teacher, she could get 10 points in one day's class, 1 point more than my grandfather, and improved the family's living situation in a relatively short period of time.

However, the work will become less and less valuable with the development of society, which has been verified by the mother, and the work of the profession of teacher has finally dropped to 2 points / day, until it finally withdraws from the stage of history.

This is just like when ordinary people buy a house and the house price is 1,000 yuan/square meter, the average household income of ordinary people is about 500-600 yuan/month. With the development of the times and the progress of society, when the house rises to 20,000 yuan / square meter, the average family income of ordinary people is about 8,000-10,000 yuan. Therefore, it is indeed difficult for ordinary people to buy a house with a fixed salary.

At that time, due to the large number of people, the family was still a little green. But when children grow up, they will be able to help their parents share some of the burden.

Later, under the introduction of the third aunt, the mother married her father by mistake. Because the day of marriage was the beginning of a turning point in the mother's fate, and it also recorded the history of the mother's grief and heartbreak.

My mother burst into tears every time she mentioned it.

A long drought is a rainstorm, a foreign country meets an old acquaintance, the cave room spends candle nights, and the gold list is inscribed. The four happy events left by the 5,000-year history of civilization of the Chinese nation. No matter what it is, it is full of joy, and it must be accompanied by happiness, joy and happiness.

Not to mention the candle night in the cave room, it has been the best memory of men and women in their lives since ancient times.

For my mother, on the contrary, it was the biggest turning point in her life, and it was the beginning of a lifetime of pain.

In the old society, it may be a little inaccurate to say the old society here. Although it is not accurate, it is enough to explain the problem. Let's temporarily define it as before the reform and opening up, the order of parents and the words of the matchmaker are one of the deep-rooted ideas that affect the Chinese nation.

Mother has never enjoyed the lingering compassion and deep affection of a man and woman in love. Just like most families at that time, you could get engaged, get married, and have a cave without seeing each other. In a vulgar phrase at the time, "As long as you turn off the lights, who will you sleep with?"

But is it really the same?

In TV dramas, there are often vigorous love stories in that period, mountain alliances and sea vows, two little guesses, childhood sweethearts...... But don't forget that most TV dramas are products after commercialization, and increasing ratings, increasing traffic, and making profits are their ultimate goals, and all the bridges are just eye-catching bargaining chips.

Both parents are poor. There was no dowry in my father's house, and no dowry in my mother's house. Just like a sentence in Mr. Zhao Benshan's sketch "Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow", what can you do with?

At that time, there was only one reason why my mother agreed to marry her, and the man she was going to marry had studied, so it should be inferred that his quality should not be low. Of course, that's all she knows. But her mistake was that she was measuring others by the yardstick of her own moral character.

They were married in the winter.

Either way, it's a big day to celebrate.

But on this happy day, the bride and her family waited from morning to evening, from elation to great disappointment.

There were no phone calls on either side. The mother's family can only wait stupidly, everything is ready, but they don't know who to contact and how to contact.

At night, the noisy sound of the tractor finally disrupted the silence of the night, and also broke the anxious and lost thoughts of the mother's family.

When everyone went out, they saw the groom sitting on an open-top tractor with a bucket, without any embellishments or decorations, nothing else, just him and the driver.

The groom's official obviously knew that the bride's family was not very satisfied. As soon as he entered the door, he didn't wait for his mother's family to speak, and said with a smile on his face: "On such a cold day, the jeep that was said to be good, the driver will not come if there is something." After searching for a long time in front of the village and behind the village, only one tractor was found. Make do, I'll take the bride away, the family is still waiting. ”

That's my father.

The mother's family is a farmer who has faced the loess with his back to the sky for generations. Extremely traditional, honest, and duty-oriented, although there are some unhappiness and reluctance, but seeing the "sincere" look on his son-in-law's face, he leaves everything else behind, and he will not distinguish whether his son-in-law's words are true or false, and he does not consider why the marriage is delayed until the evening, and he does not consider that the promised jeep has become a tractor......

On the contrary, when I heard my son-in-law say that everyone in the family was waiting, I panicked even more, for fear of causing trouble to others, and I felt like I always owed someone else. Grandpa hurriedly said, "Then you should go quickly, don't let your family wait in a hurry." ”

Although the mother was 10,000 unhappy, perhaps due to the influence of feudal ideas and the urging of her grandfather, and considering that the groom had gone to school and studied after all, all her doubts were left behind.

Dressed in clean clothes, and carrying the only dowry that grandpa could take out to accompany the dowry, the polished girder bicycle, climbed onto the back bucket of the extremely tattered and cold tractor. When I left, I didn't even arrange to send off my relatives. As for why, it is impossible to find out.

Maybe that's what it was meant to be!