A family of four, father, mother, brother Xiaoyang and sister Xiaoyu.

Mom and Dad got married in 1969, two years later the elder brother Xiaoyang was born, and six years later, the younger sister Xiaoyu was born. I am that sister, Jia Xiaoyu.

Dad is a high school student in a village in the Guanzhong Plain, of low to medium height, dark skin, small eyes and nose, and extremely smart. At that time, the high school student was a literal person, and he worked as a teacher in his township school. Dad's family is poor, Dad's grandparents originally lived in the mountains of Lantian Luhu Town, and they couldn't live anymore, so they picked 4 children to come out and settled in Gaojia Village. Grandpa was an honest farmer, grandma was sick for a long time and was paralyzed in bed, and my father's family had four children, and here we are talking about survival. An elder brother and two older sisters, the elder brother studied well and became a worker, both sisters had eye diseases, and the second sister later lost her sight completely, and after the age of 18, she suffered from a serious bone disease and could not walk upright, and never married.

My mother's background is a bit complicated, his father, that is, my own grandfather, is said to be a Kuomintang official, who disobeyed orders and did not go to Taiwan, incognito, and made a living repairing shoes in the ancient city of Chang'an. He had five children, two boys and three girls, each of whom had a peerless look. They all had fair skin, with a white porcelain sheen, especially the big eyes under the thick eyebrows, which were larger than the average big eyes, and the pupils were brown, a bit like the eyes of a Persian cat, with a straight nose, and the children were always the most conspicuous in the crowd. My grandmother gave birth to her last child and suffered from postpartum madness, unable to take care of herself, let alone take care of her own child, and the youngest child was quickly given away, leaving no information from the family who took it away. Life is difficult, the youngest of the remaining 4 must also be given away, that is, my mother, when she was 4 years old, she was sent to an ordinary family in the countryside, there is only one girl in this family, she is already ten years old, and she is desperate for a boy to be born, and my mother is used as a role to recruit younger brothers. My mother was 4 years old when she joined her adoptive father's house, and in the years that followed, her adoptive parents added three younger brothers.

In the local area, my father can speak, write and calculate, and is considered a talented person, and my mother is outstanding, and no one can surpass her in ten miles of streets.

In the end, the talented and beautiful women came together.

Dad was transferred to the suburbs as a civilian cadre because of the good materials he wrote, and it was the saddest day for my mother at that time, with two children alone, and farm work, no one could help her, and it was miserable. Mom couldn't support it alone, so Dad was transferred back to the rural primary school, but the difference was that Dad became the principal. In my vague memory, there was a jeep in the village, and children circled around it, which was a rarity at the time. It is said that when he came to Humanity Jin, he persuaded his father to return to the suburbs to take up his post, but his father looked at the situation at home and finally politely declined. When I was 4 years old, the country resumed the college entrance examination system, my father hesitated again and again, did not take the college entrance examination, everyone around me knew that if the father with outstanding academics took the college entrance examination, there was no doubt that he would win, but my mother pulled the two children, and my father was really unable to withdraw, so he could only give up.

At the recommendation of my father, my mother also entered the school as a teacher, and at that time I had a special title: private teacher. I was a kid and I remember being locked in my house or in an aunt's house, and my mother was busy, but at least my mother didn't have to do farm work anymore.

The Township Education Bureau stipulates that both husband and wife, especially one of the leaders, cannot serve in a school. Dad and Mom can't stay in the same school, our family has two bases, and Dad's school is dozens of kilometers away from home. Mom takes my brother, and Dad takes me. In those days, there was only one day off on weekends, and the family of four basically only reunited once a month. And all the good memories of my childhood about a family of four are in that small courtyard.

In my memory, our home was so warm. The small courtyard, facing north and south, was divided into a front and back yard, which was separated by a wall with a yellow door in the middle. The building is built on the west side of the front yard and is divided into three rooms, the first room is the storage room from south to north, the second room is the living room, and the third room is the bedroom. To the north is connected to the building is the kitchen, which is not directly covered by the west wall, but is a meter away from the west wall, where there is a well. On the west side of the backyard is a toilet, and on the east side is a small shed with two sticks in the middle of the shed, which is where the chickens sleep on the shelves. Mom is good at raising chickens, and at that time, chickens had to fly to the stick when they slept at night, commonly known as chickens on the shelves. At that time, the chickens were very powerful, and sometimes the chickens flocks fought, and the powerful chickens could flutter their wings and fly to the roof.

Because my father has a salary, my mother is a private teacher and can record her work, and later I also have a salary, compared to other families, our family's life is very good. In my memory, when the children in the village were eating two steamed buns, my family was already eating big white steamed buns. Every morning, my brother and I can eat egg custard, pour a little soy sauce into it, carefully draw the squares with a spoon, and eat it one by one, which is very delicious.

Every time Dad went to the city for a meeting, he would bring back an oil-paper bag in Muslim Street, which contained a small piece of lamb in cured sauce, which was simply a delicacy in the world. I tear and eat with my hands, tearing small pieces by piece, chewing slowly, lengthening the process of enjoyment, leaving a fragrance on my teeth and cheeks, every bite is a delicacy in the world, and at the end of eating, there is a small white oil ball left, I will take it into my mouth, let it slowly cross out, and the fragrance lasts for a long, long time. Maybe it was so delicious that it left a deep, deep mark on my childhood, and I still have a long aftertaste, but I haven't tasted it again.

Dad is very hands-on, and he now laughs at himself, saying that if he hadn't been a teacher, he would definitely be a carpenter. Dad planted two sycamore trees directly opposite our house, in my memory, those two sycamore trees are particularly stout, the crown is particularly large, Dad said one is my brother, the other is me. Every year, when the sycamore trees are in full bloom, look up and see the trumpets of the sycamore trees blowing all over the yard, which is very beautiful. Every morning, my brother and I would brush our teeth under the tree where we belonged with our tooth jars. In the middle of the two plane trees is a round table made of cement by Daddy, and there are four stone piers next to the table. In the season when you can eat in the yard, a family of four sits together and spreads out a happy picture of a small farm yard, but there are some fly in the ointment, the butt is too cold, it was too small at that time, and I didn't know how to put a mat under the buttocks, and I don't know why my parents didn't think of it at that time? In addition to leaving a two-meter passage in the middle of the front yard, the rest of the space has been planted with elm trees by my father, with an interval of one meter, and every time I get elm money, I look up at the green elm money in the sky, a string of elm money;

When I was four years old, my dad asked me to sleep separately, and he climbed up the plane tree that belonged to me, sawed off the thin trunks of many plane trees, and dried them. I learned that the trunk of the sycamore tree was empty. Dad hollowed out the core of the sycamore trunk, threaded the fine steel bars into it, and then drove nails and sawed branches, and after two days of busy work, he made me a small bed, which was surrounded by a fence, leaving a small opening up and down, and I could sit on it as soon as I twisted my buttocks. My heart was full of joy, and on the day I was done, I slept noisily, and the children came to my house to play, and they were all envious to death, which was something that I was too worthy of showing off in my childhood.

At that time, the winter was very cold, and there were basically no fresh vegetables, but there was one food that I remember deeply, that is, sauerkraut with corn and hazelnuts. The sauerkraut was pickled in an urn by my mother with radish tassels, and I was only a little taller than that urn when I was about 4 years old. In winter, my mother scooped up the sauerkraut from the urn, brought the kind of ice ballast, cut it on the board, sprinkled some salt, poured some spicy noodles, and then poured some rapeseed oil on the iron spoon, stuffed it into the stove, burned until it smoked, and then poured it on the spicy noodles, and a fragrant smell wafted away. We put a kang table on the kang, sat together, drank the bread of grain and hazelnut, and ate the sauerkraut with ice ballast, which was very delicious.

In the summer, Dad would buy a bag of watermelons and put them under the bed, and every afternoon, when everyone was busy, Dad would pick a watermelon, and then draw a bucket of water in the well, put the watermelon in the ice, and the family of four sat around to enjoy it. Once, my father cut the melon, and it was actually yellow, yellow, and very sweet, and it was sweet until the tip of my heart. That scene was frozen in the depths of my memory, and I felt happiness oozing from every pore. When I casually looked back at the window, I saw my playmate coming to me, peeking through the glass window into the room, and the corners of his mouth were almost watering. Usually, I will definitely invite her in to share, but at that moment, I don't want to break the happiness that overflows from the bottom of my heart, I want to freeze the picture of a family of four staying together, so I pretended not to see her, turned my head and took a small bite of the yellow watermelon, that beauty will always exist in the depths of my memory, always flooding, warming the years to come......