Mother's love and affection (2) Zhang Baotong 2016.4.6

My mother chose to marry my stepfather and start a family in order to save us from loneliness and sorrow, and not to take us back to our rural hometown to live. If my mother hadn't chosen this path at that time, our family might not have been what it is now. The marriage of my mother and stepfather made our family's collapsed sky prop up again, and we could see the blue sky and sunshine again. My mother is no longer as tired during the day as she used to be, and she cries secretly at night. Our lives have also begun to take a new turn.

I only have memories from the time of my father's death, because we were the only family living next to the construction site of the Luohe Railway Bridge, and I could only see the workers who repaired the piers coming over the makeshift wooden bridge, and I never saw their family and other children. My only playmate is my sister, who is two years older than me. Once, when I was playing on the small wooden bridge, I accidentally fell into the river, but fortunately the small wooden bridge and the piers blocked me and did not get swept away by the river, at this time, my sister walked on the small wooden bridge, and when she saw that I had fallen into the river, she took a small wooden stick and stretched out a small wooden stick to me and pulled me up from the river.

I don't have any memory of how my mother got married to my stepfather, but once a man came to my cave, and my mother asked me to call him Dad. I know my dad is dead, but I can't help but listen to my mom. Later, he took us out of the cave next to the construction site and moved to the railway family compound more than ten miles away. That's when I suddenly realized that we had entered a whole new world. There are so many people living here, and they live in neat rows of houses. Our family lives in the same house as other people's houses, and I get to play with many children every day.

This should be the beginning of my childhood, except for the shadow of my father's death that has always been hidden in my heart, my childhood is relatively happy. Therefore, whenever my brother recalls that experience, when he talks about how he was hungry and how he was wronged, he always sighs and sighs, and even tears, but my memories are full of innocence and joy. Because of our stepfather, our family has been able to enjoy the same treatment as others.

My mom later said that my stepfather's colleague at that time asked my mom to change our surname to Bian, but my mom didn't agree, she said, "These three children are raised by the state, and their surnames can't be changed." "So, we in the Agency know that the first three children in our family are surnamed Zhang and the last three are surnamed Bian. Except for the old people of our father's generation, they knew that we lived on state pensions, and later people, including younger siblings, did not know that their older brothers and sisters were supported by the state.

My mother has a very kind heart and is always full of love for people. I remember not long after we moved to the family compound, one morning, my stepfather got off the night shift, and he seemed to be carrying a baby in his cotton coat, crying incessantly. I was curious. Soon, I saw my stepfather take out a baby from his coat and say to my mother, "I don't know who left this child next to the construction site, and the child kept crying, and I saw that she was pitiful, so I took her back." My mom took the baby, looked very happy, and said, "Okay, we'll keep it." With that, he unbuttoned his shirt and breastfed the child. When I think about it now, I wonder how my mother could still have milk to feed her baby when my sister had been dead for months? My mother's milk never seems to be in short supply, even in that era when there was no last meal, my mother's milk was open for the child to eat, so our children's bodies are very healthy. However, when my wife gave birth to a child, I had no milk to feed the child, and I was puzzled by this for a long time. Sometimes, life is so wonderful, my sister died a few days after my father died, but God sent me another sister.

Later, my brother also picked up a baby girl in front of the hospital, wrapped it in clothes, and placed 20 yuan and a note next to it, which said the child's birthday. My brother took the baby back and asked my mom if she wanted the baby or not. Because this is a big thing that requires my mother's consent. My mother didn't even think about it, so she asked my brother to stay, and she also helped my brother to bring the child to school all the time.

Although my mother has so many children, she has never treated her own children differently. She treated her like her own child. Once, my mother saw a small pustule on my eldest sister's face, so she squeezed it with her hand, and as a result, my eldest sister developed a high fever and fell unconscious. My mother hurriedly sent her to the county people's hospital, and when the hospital saw that the child was sick like this, she asked my mother to send her to Changsha Hospital. My mother took her unconscious eldest sister to Changsha Railway Hospital by train, and stayed in Changsha for three weeks. At that time, I was in junior high school, and I couldn't imagine how my mother, a small-footed woman, sent my sister from the county hospital to the Changsha Railway Hospital. Later, I heard my mother say that the hospital diagnosed my eldest sister with acute sepsis, and I was notified of her critical illness three times in a row, but in the end, my eldest sister still died and miraculously survived. Now my eldest sister has been in charge of my mother's money, and she takes out all the money we send to my mother from the bank, and then deposits it in my mother's account. And my eldest sister still didn't know about her origins, because she never suspected that she was born to her mother.

At the same time, my mom was always grateful for the kindness of others. Whoever gives her a drop of water, she will repay her with a gushing spring. My mother has a straightforward personality, and when she sees or hears something wrong, she has to fight them to the end. However, to my stepfather, she has always been humble and tolerant. My stepfather has a very bad temper, a stubborn personality, and loves to admit death, so sometimes because of a little thing, he can finish with you. But his mother tried to let him go, because he had always been grateful to him. Especially after his stepfather retired, he stayed at home all day, he couldn't listen to the slightest annoyance, even if the child shouted, he would lose his temper. Especially the stepfather has been frugal all his life, and he can't see a few dishes on the table at home, and someone will drink some wine. Sometimes he's so angry that he almost lifts the table for you. However, my mother could always endure it, but she couldn't bear it anymore, so she went out to visit the house. After the death of the stepfather, the funeral was very grand, and every year during the Qingming Festival and the New Year, the mother asked everyone to kowtow to the stepfather first, and then burn paper on the cemetery to send money.

My mom and stepdad couldn't read, so I started naming my eldest sister before I even went to school. Later, I gave the names of my brother and my little sister. In addition to going to work, my stepfather sleeps, because he often has to work night shifts, and my mother is in charge of the life of the family and the education of the children. My mother didn't pay much attention to our studies, but she paid great attention to how we behaved. As long as we did something wrong, in addition to scolding us, she would sometimes pick up a bamboo stick or broom and beat us. Even my brother is in junior high school, and my mother still pulls him and beats him. After the beating, I had to scold for a long time, and sometimes I had to cry and say to us, "Your father is gone, I pulled you up, how difficult it is, why are you so unlucky." ”

Mother was very strict with us, especially very concerned about our progress and appearance. When I was a freshman in high school, the school began to develop team members. One of my neighbor's sisters was very good at school and was absorbed into the school Youth League branch. My mother asked me why I didn't join the group. The first batch of people to join the group were the best people in the school, and they were all sophomores, so why would it be my turn, and besides, I didn't even write an application. However, I didn't make it clear at the time, but

My mother not only asked us to be motivated, but also kept abreast of our work. My sister went to work at the UNRWA before she finished her first year of junior high school. Working on the Agency's construction site was very hard, lifting cement slabs, smashing stones and digging earth. But my sister is young, and sometimes she can't bear to work. Other people's children have been transferred from the engineering team to other positions, but my stepfather is too honest and doesn't ask for anything. My mother had no choice, so she left us children at home, and one of us took a train from Hunan to Jixi in Anhui Province, and found the personnel director of the Agency, saying that my stepfather was the first person in the Agency to participate in the revolution and a disabled soldier, and the unit should take care of him. The HR directors were all acquaintances, and after my mother said this, she transferred my sister from the construction site to my stepfather's material factory the next day.

We have the impression that we never have a penny of pocket money in our hands. Even my brother and sister and I went to school on the benefit of the state's bursary. Except for food and clothing, we never ask for anything from our mother. However, when I was in my second year of junior high school, I became obsessed with playing table tennis. You have to have a racket to play. My racket is a rubber racket that has been exchanged with someone else with a marble, and there is no sponge. At that time, table tennis skills had already begun to develop towards the curve ball play, and I wanted to learn to pull the curve ball. The curved ball should use the kind of anti-rubber racket with sponge. So, I told my mom that I wanted a shield racket. This kind of racket is very expensive, it costs three yuan, and we don't sell it in Miluo County, so we can only buy it in Changsha. Originally, I didn't think my mother would spend so much money to buy me a racket, because my mother wouldn't do it except for daily food and clothing at home

Mother was uneducated, but took our studies very seriously. Every time I go home, I have to read a book or write something. As long as I was studying, my mother wouldn't let anyone bother. I went back for more than a month during the Chinese New Year this year, and I also brought my laptop back to write something, and as long as I was writing, my mother didn't let anyone bother me. Sometimes, my mother wanted to talk to me, and when I was writing, she waited until I was eating. Every hour or two when I wrote, my mother reminded me that it was time to eat the apple. My mother had cataract surgery last month, and I asked her if she needed me to go back. But my mother knew that I had signed a contract with the website to write 2,000 words every day, so she asked my little sister to go back from Guizhou. This month, she had to have surgery on her other eye, and asked my sister to go back from Anhui, and repeatedly told me not to work too hard and not to damage my body.

Now that we are older and our mother is old, we should be relieved. Still, she likes to worry about us. She remembers what each of our children likes to eat, and she also knows what other things are difficult for each of our families. As long as she can help, she will not be idle. Because my family was poor when I was a child, I rarely ate meat, and once, when my family bought pork, I ate a piece, and as soon as I ate it in my throat, I felt very tired, so I vomited all of a sudden, and since then, as soon as I smell pork, I am nauseous. So, from the time I started going to the countryside, every time I came home, my mother would kill chickens or buy fish for me. Later, after I came to work in Xi'an, every year when I went home for the Chinese New Year, my mother would smoke a lot of fish so that I could come back to eat, and when I left, she would let me take some with me. My mom knew I loved apples, and as soon as she heard that I was going home, she would buy a box of apples and put them for me to come back to eat. She was happy to see us eating what she made or bought, as if that was her greatest wish.

My mother has been poor all her life, but she takes money very lightly and her children very seriously. My sister and I work in a railway unit and the salary is higher. My sister has been sending money home every month since she was fifteen years old. I have been sending money home every month since I was seventeen years old. It stands to reason that the money sent home is not small. However, when my stepfather died, we realized that my mother had almost no money. Because she gave all the money to the people in need. After the death of the stepfather, the family stipulated that the son should send 100 per month to his mother and the daughter 50 per month. However, when someone's family was in difficulty, my mother not only didn't want his money, but also funded him with the money she had saved. Later, I had to send my mother almost two or three thousand a year, and the other sisters also sent her a lot of money. However, she was still so frugal, and still had no money, because she had taken all the money out. We know that my mother can't see who in the family is in difficulty, and she wants everyone in the family to live well.

The mother is used to hardships all her life, and she is used to being independent, as long as it is what she can do, she resolutely does not trouble her children. So, for many years, she lived alone. In the past two years, because of the lack of strength in her hands and feet, my brother came to bring her food at noon, she ate, and then left some of the food for hot food at night. Last year, when she stepped on a small stool to put a quilt in a large cabinet, she overturned from the small stool and fell heavily to the ground, with a big bag on her head, and she almost died, but fortunately the rescue was timely. After that, we all felt uncomfortable with her living alone. She is 87 years old this year, and her eyes suffer from severe cataracts, and she can't even see her watch or TV, and she can't fill a hot water bottle. So, when we all returned home during the Chinese New Year, we agreed to take turns taking care of our mother, and each of our six children lived with our mother for two months a year. However, my mother felt that everyone was very busy and that each family had its own business, so she firmly disagreed with this plan. In the end, we decided to give my mother cataract surgery first, and then we agreed on a case-by-case basis.

My mother is getting older and her health is getting worse and worse, and there are very few elderly people left in our family area who are about her age. Therefore, we have been very worried in our hearts, really afraid that one day our mother will leave, what will we do with our big family. At that point, who will care about us?