Searching for the old lover Zhang Baotong 2019.3.2 Toronto trip

1. The desire of the heart

There are always many regrets in life, but my biggest regret is that I have lived with my wife for the rest of my life. We have been divorced since we had children in the second year of marriage, but for various reasons, my wife has never been separated. It's been making trouble for nearly twenty or thirty years, annoying people, getting tired, and getting older in front of me, so I don't want to make a fuss. However, this has also become the biggest regret and pain in my life.

I retired last year, and since I have been living a free life of writing in the morning, playing ball in the afternoon, and surfing the Internet in the evening. Qingxian Dao is very leisurely, and I don't feel lonely, but I often feel pessimistic, and I feel that I haven't found a satisfactory woman in this life, and I have lost too much. Now that I'm older, it's impossible to make up for what I've lost.

Maybe it's because of this mentality.,I often think back to past relationships and lovers in my dreams.,From elementary school to before marriage.,Let alone about 20 girls and lovers I've met.。 Every time I think about one of them, I feel a lot of emotion, thinking about what it would be like if I lived with her.

In the year since I retired, I often think of them in my boredom and sleep because of my lack of activity, and I feel that if any one of them became my wife, I would probably be better than my current wife. Regardless of whether the material conditions are better than they are now, at least in terms of feelings, it will be very good. Because his wife is not in good health and often gets sick, these decades of life are like an experience of constantly battling the disease. The body is not good, the personality is still very strong, and everything has to compete with you for a high and low, and divide the victory and defeat. That's why I hardly talked to her for decades, because no matter what she said, there would be an argument as soon as she spoke. So, our lives are either cold war or quarrels. That's why I've always been disappointed and helpless in my marriage.

It was one morning in early March last year, and it had rained a lot of spring rain the night before. When I woke up in the morning, it was still dark. I was lying in bed and didn't want to get up because it was okay to get up so early. I just reminisce about a dream I just had. In my dream, I met a lover from the past. This lover is actually only a brief scene in my love history, very briefly. But it made me feel very deeply.

The person I dreamed of was called Lisa Xu. The first time I saw her was on the basketball court at school. It was five o'clock in the spring afternoon, and after school, I was playing basketball with some high school students on the court with Mr. Liu in the office. At this time, a twenty-two or three-year-old girl came to the edge of the court and asked Teacher Liu, "Uncle Liu, have you seen my mother?"

Teacher Liu grabbed the ball, stood on the sidelines, and replied to the girl, "Is your mother tutoring students in the class?" ”

I happened to be standing across from the girl and glanced at her. Immediately, my heart skipped a beat. Oh, why is this girl so good-looking! It made me look at her for a little longer.

The girl wore a plain red blouse and clean blue trousers, and two short braids that were not too long. At first glance, she is a beautiful girl. However, after a few more glances, I found that this girl was elegant and delicate, with an extraordinary temperament, and a kind of intelligent aura and delicate gentleness in her temperament. This hidden beauty is not visible to everyone, only those who are particularly sensitive to emotions can see it clearly. And I'm a person who is particularly sensitive to emotional characteristics. I have seen a lot of beautiful girls, but I have never seen such a clear and beautiful girl, not at all like a girl from an ordinary worker's family. I thought to myself who this girl was, so good! It made me look at her intently, and I felt that she made me feel a very good feeling and longing in my heart. The girl must have felt the burning of my gaze, looked straight at me, and then left.

I couldn't help but ask Teacher Liu, "Whose girl is this?"

Teacher Liu said, "It's Teacher Ding's girl, who just graduated from Shaanxi Normal University. ”

I thought to myself, no wonder this girl is so different, she is a college student. Because at that time, people who could go to college were very enviable. It can be said that this girl is pleasing to my eyes and has a good impression. However, she had nothing to do with me, so I quickly forgot about her.

A few days later, one evening, after dinner, I sat in my office writing an essay for the Xi'an Evening News. Because I am single and my home is in Hunan, I eat at school, live in school, and go back to the dormitory except for sleeping at night, and I usually stay in the office. After dinner, it wasn't quite dark. Outside the back door of the office is the playground, and there are some teachers who take their families to walk and exercise on the playground.

After a while, Mr. Ding came into the office to greet me. This makes me feel strange, because she teaches high school Chinese, and I teach junior high school English, and the office is not in the same building, and I usually say hello when we meet, and there are no extra words. However, she sat across from me and asked, "Teacher Zhang, how old are you this year?"

I said, "Twenty-four." "I think she was a little knowingly asking, but she also knew that she might have to introduce me to someone, otherwise she would ask me such a thing.

She said to me, "My girl has just graduated from college and is working as a librarian in the school library. My wife and I were reluctant to do so. Then he asked me, "Have you seen my girl?" ”

I said, "Your girl is really beautiful, I met her once the other day, and she happened to come to you at school." ”

Then she said to me, "My wife has seen you, and I told him that you like to write and publish your work in the newspapers. He still admires you. ”

Of course, I could hear what she was saying, and I was naturally happy. It's just that I'm still very worried in my heart, because I think other girls may not look down on me, because I graduated from a junior college and people are serious undergraduates. Take table tennis as an analogy, people are professional players, and I am only a semi-professional player, and the level and level are not on the same level. And my advantage is that I am taller and handsome, maybe other girls like my appearance. Because when the girl looked at me that afternoon, it was as if she had a crush on me.

So, when she offered to let me go to her house on a weekend night to meet her daughter, I said yes right away. But I really didn't take it seriously, because I was self-aware, and the girls were so good that I couldn't reach them, so I hardly had much hope, I just wanted to give it a try, and if I could succeed, it would be a blessing. If it doesn't work out, there's nothing to lose, and no one will know about it.

On the weekend night, Ms. Ding took me to her house, and her husband also likes to write, and often writes news reports and other articles for the unit. Her home is in the family building next to the school, and it is a two-bedroom house. When I came to their house, her husband talked to me about writing. It can be seen that her husband still admires me. We chatted for a while, and their daughter came back from work.

Her daughter is really beautiful, that gentle and demure appearance is like a plain and fragrant orchid, which makes people smell a fragrant smell. She came into the house, sat with me for a short while, said a few words, and then went into her little bedroom. I can't remember what we said together, I don't remember anything now, anyway, they were all very usual and easy-going polite words, the language and tone were very decent, but the message was clear.

I immediately felt that this was a hopeless struggle, and I could only say that Ms. Ding and her wife hoped that their daughter could get along with me, but her daughter did not have such a will. So, I sat down for a while and took my leave. I knew right away that this was the end of the matter. Sure enough, half a month later, Mr. Ding told me that her daughter's object was going to teach at a university in Singapore, and her daughter was going to go abroad with him. It was the early 80s of the last century, and the craze for going abroad was surging, so anyone who could study abroad or move abroad was very enviable, very amazing, like a person suddenly flying into the sky.

Strictly speaking, I was not in a relationship with Mr. Ding's daughter at all, at best we could only see each other. But she made a great impression on me, and she was the most knowledgeable of all the girls I had ever met, so I always thought that her fate would be very good.

Yes, her life and destiny will definitely be good, because Singapore itself is a rich country, and her husband is a scholar and his income will definitely be very high. But how high and how good will it be? Actually, what does it have to do with me whether she's doing well or not? But I just want to know. It was not out of curiosity, but out of a concern and connection with my own destiny, because I wanted to know how much better and higher her life would be than mine.

So, I had the idea of visiting her in Singapore. Actually, it's not a whim, it's a wish I've had for a long time. Because it is not very difficult to go to Singapore now, you can fly back and forth for 35,000 yuan. However, soon after, I received a notice that my classmates were going to gather in their hometown of Miluo, Hunan, and asked me to return to Miluo on May 10 to attend the reunion. And among my classmates there was a girl I had a crush on in the past. In this way, I have the idea to use this free time in front of me to go around the world and see every lover I have ever loved.

As I said earlier, there are more than 20 people from the girls I liked and had a crush on since elementary school to the lovers I met before I got married. But most of them are concentrated in Xi'an, and almost all of them are the first love of youth. Although this first love has been around for a long time, it has always been cherished in my heart and made me unforgettable. It was the purest and most sincere relationship in my life, and it was also the good time I was most anxious to get back. However, we used to live in the family area of the Sixth Iron Fourth Bureau in Miluo, Hunan Province, and after graduation, our classmates were scattered, and some of them even went to the United States, Canada and Taiwan, so it was very difficult to meet them, but I still wanted to see them. It's all about traveling.

I left my hometown in Miluo, Hunan Province at the age of seventeen, so my future love experiences took place in Xi'an. Almost all of those lovers in the past are also in Xi'an, but because more than 30 years have passed, many places have been demolished, and many people do not know where they have moved, so it is not easy to meet them, but it is much easier than going to other places and going abroad.

I'm going to make a big search for my past lovers, to find out what their lives are like, to see what they would be like if they didn't live with me once, and to fulfill a wish that I have cherished for many years.