In fact, when I learned that I had won the award, I immediately told my mother the news, and her reaction was very cold, just lightly said that it was good to win the award, at least I didn't learn to paint in vain. To my surprise, I always thought that she would be very happy that I could achieve such an achievement, after all, the award was very influential, and when I decided to learn to draw, my mother said that she hoped that one day I would win this award. After winning the award, some critics ranked me as one of the most promising painters in the next decade, and made a price assessment of my paintings, which is also quite optimistic about the collection. I always felt that I could not afford such an honor, and the critic probably did not know that I had already decided not to paint anymore, so I gave the work I entered the competition to Mr. Ou because I have an indelible gratitude to him. From the bottom of my heart, winning the award was just a temporary surprise to adjust my life, and after three interviews with journalists, I have recovered from that surprise and just hope to return to my normal life.

When I first told my mother the news, I wanted her to be proud and happy for me. At a time when I was conflicted with her because of my marriage, I hoped that this news would ease our mother-son relationship. After I escaped over the wall that year, I learned from my uncle that my mother had been crying for three whole days, and no one could persuade me. But after that time, she seemed to be a different person, and she never mentioned marriage in front of me again, and she never said anything about blind dates and marriages on the phone. At first, I was happy about it, but the more I went on, the more I felt fear and fear, and deep self-blame. I know that it is not that my mother understands the outlook on life that I adhere to from the depths, but that she has lost all her thoughts after being tortured by me again and again. After that, she spoke in the same tone as before, except that she never mentioned my marriage. She no longer put the sentence "Your father died early, I pulled you up, have you ever thought about me?" ”

One day, my mother posted a small video of my grandmother eating in a relative's online chat group. The video shows the side face of my grandmother, who is one hundred and four years old, and the old age makes people suspect that she is about to die in the next moment. But from the moment I can remember, she was so old, she never changed, and it was as if she would live forever. The speed and frequency of her walking have never changed, a pair of small feet that were wrapped up nearly a century ago only take small steps, she always speaks slowly and logically, she always sees things brightly, she has spent a hundred years of life with bright eyes and keen hearing, the only thing she is like an old man is that she is already very old at first glance. In that video, my grandmother sat on a chair in my house, with silver hair, chewing on the food her mother bought for her, her face expressionless, her face wrinkled and squirming with the bite of her lips. My mother and my grandmother are very similar, especially when I look at the side face, at that moment, I seem to see the moment of my mother's old age through time, and see that she is over 100 years old like my grandmother, and I have also entered old age at that time, without a wife and children, and I am lonely all my life. All the people in the village who had been baptized with her mother had died, and she was the only one left, and those who died before her were enjoying their lives in their twilight years, but the mother had never seen her son get married. It wasn't until that moment that I really understood the weight of my mother's words, "When have you ever thought about me?" My impression of my father was just a bearded face, and I always thought that this memory point was when I was not born for a long time, even though it was thought that I was not yet capable of keeping any memories in my mind. And the three years I spent in the city by the sea, except for those three years, I would go home every Chinese New Year, but in those three years, in order to seek selfish self-protection, I never thought about the fact that my mother was alone at home, and she only had me as a son. And my willfulness in marriage, all of which made me seem so selfish and cruel.

I told the girl on the blind date that I was feeling guilty, and by then, it had been almost a year since we first met. At the beginning, we were more familiar with each other, she had said a lot in the emails that made me talk, she didn't read many books, she never spoke like a scholar, but with a deeper understanding of life, her speaking style is very similar to Yingxiu. On a visit to my hometown, I met her in the county seat, and she sent me an email the night before, which I read carefully, but I haven't written a reply. It was the second time we met after the blind date, and the second time we communicated by talking. She was much more cheerful than when I first met her, and I think it was probably because we had been in constant email for more than half a year, and her hair was much longer than when I first met.

"You had short hair when we first met. I said, "It's been so long." ”

"You too. She said, "The beard has grown." ”

After that encounter, we met three more times as friends, once in our same city, and the other two times in our hometown. But I told her about the guilt I felt about my mother, and she quickly replied that she wanted to talk to me in person.

It was the sixth time we had met, and she first congratulated me on my award with a smile and then talked about what had happened to her. Eventually, the conversation gradually turned to my guilt about my mother. She said that she had always wanted to tell me to think more about my mother, and as far as she knew, my mother was an amazing woman, at least so for everyone in our village, including our neighboring villages, and she had heard about my mother's life experience, and she thought it was a blessing for me to have such a mother. But she didn't say it at first because she knew I heard too much of it, but it didn't move me. She had long said that I had my own personality and temperament, and that what I needed was to wait for a chance event that would spur me to change my mind again, and in fact, she had been waiting for such an event to happen. When she saw the email I sent him, she knew that the incident had happened.

"The moment I saw your letter. She said, "I feel the need to see you once." ”

She said that I had been converted, and that I didn't need to be persuaded by others, and that persuasion in many things would not work. We talked from the afternoon until late at night until she reminded us that it was not too early. I felt the need to send her back, but she refused, saying I needed to go back and rest sooner. On the way back, I felt that many of the things she said were normal, I had heard them from many people, but I felt rewarded only from her mouth. The next day, many of her words still made me reminisce, and I felt a desire to discuss with her again, and I began to take the initiative to ask her to meet, and she always came as promised, and never refused my invitation. Eventually, I found that her words became more and more ordinary, with almost nothing outstanding, and I suspected at one point that I wanted to talk to her only out of the inertia of life. Until one time in the park at night, she looked at me as if she was looking for something she had lost in the years. At that moment I realized that she was not as ordinary as when I first met her, although she was not pretty, but with a beautiful charm, I think this is the reason why I have been in contact with her for a long time, we are no longer strangers, and the unique acquaintance between acquaintances will make each other's appearance more comfortable.

During that time, the guilt of my mother in my heart made me always want to go to the girl on a blind date to confide in me, and I also wanted to hear her commonplace words. Strangely enough, though I knew that my words were clichés and that there was nothing new in her rhetoric, I still had the hope of being relieved from her. One day, I was sitting under a maple tree with her, and she asked me what my favorite dish was.

"Stir-fried shredded potatoes. I said.

She said her dish was well cooked and invited me to eat at her place. She and her friends rented a room in an old campus, and the hallway smelled musty, and the voice-activated lights were all broken, so we had to use the light of our mobile phones to climb the stairs. But their rooms were clean and tidy, and I remembered how I felt when I first arrived in the city by the sea and saw Yingxiu's house. She was busy cooking in the kitchen, I was embarrassed to be idle, and three or four times I got up and went to the kitchen to ask if she needed help, and she always resolutely refused, saying that I just had to wait for the meal to start. Her busy figure reminds me of the dancer who resembles Helenlin, and she was the same when I first went to her place. I think she must have been married to the owner of the steel structure factory she met in the Black Ballroom. At the same time, I also remembered Qiu Pei, who used to cook for herself in the last days of that city, and I, as her neighbor and piano student, always ate with her, and she learned a lot of our hometown dishes from the Internet at that time, and the cooking was very delicious. But when the two of them were cooking, I never felt the warmth of a blind date girl. The kitchen sliding door was halfway open, and I watched her busy figure inside. I've never liked her, and I'm not even as fond of her as the dancer who resembles Hai Linlin and Qiu Pei, but I still think that maybe that's how marriage is. I took the initiative to ask her what the outcome of our blind date would be.

"For the results of our blind date. I said, "What's your attitude? It's been more than a year." ”

"Everything fell into place. She said, "I am also confused, and everything is up to you." ”

That meal left a deep impression on me, and it also made me re-examine my attitude towards marriage, which made my guilt for my mother even worse. I called my mother, and for the first time I offered to talk about my marriage, she just said lightly: "You can decide for yourself." It seemed to her that it didn't matter if I got married or not, but it made me shift even more in the direction I needed to get married, and I started to rethink what marriage meant. I found Yingxiu, who was married at that time, and his husband and wife were in love, and he had become a key employee of a large chain company, wearing a designer suit and a luxury car, which made him exude the glory of the upper class of society. But in front of me, he showed that he was flowing again, but he was much more stable than before. I told him that there was something wrong with my previous views on marriage, and I began to want to get married.

"How is your married life?" I asked him.

"Happiness and troubles coexist. He said, "But I need it." ”

He was glad that my concept had changed, and said that my mother had called him before, and she knew that he was my best friend, and she hoped that he would enlighten me more in front of me and let me return to a normal way of life. But since I escaped over the wall, she hasn't said anything to him. And he didn't do anything, he said that he knew me very well, that nothing could move me, that I had been in a state of being brainwashed by art and books, that no one could bring me out, that everything was on my own. Yingxiu told me about his life after marriage, and he said that when he was young, he didn't know that love was actually full of illusions like life, and if he didn't pay attention to it, he would be led astray, and he would never recover. I don't know whether it was intentional or unintentional, he first regained his memory of the shopping guide girl many years ago, and he said that although I shouldn't have done it to a woman, that punch still changed his life. In the end, he said that he hoped that the punch would not only wake him up, but also be my self-motivation.

A few days later, the girl and I were sitting on a bare bed covered with gravel on the river that ran through the city, and Hai Linlin had come to the place with one of her blind dates to feed the fish, and I guessed that the place we were sitting was probably where they were. Then we sat on a high pile of rubble, the sun was slowly setting in the western sky, and her hair was occasionally blown up by the wind, tearing the golden sun into several pieces. I looked at her side face, thinking that from the first time I met her to that moment, I hadn't done much meaningful things with her, and we were together more because of the fixed identity of confiding and listening, and I always wanted to get a sense of guilt from her, and she was always happy to be a good listener. While I am grateful to her, but also deeply sorry for her, I always thought that she hoped that our blind date would end in success, and that we would be married and spend our lives together. She turned her head to look at me, I saw the outline of her face against the rays of the sun, and the warmth generated by the communication with her for more than a year made me feel calm and happy like the afterglow of the sunset, and occasionally accompanied by a few water birds crossing the river brought a sadness of negative years.

"I think there has to be a result between us," I said, "if we get married, the marriage will be stable." ”

Actually, I mustered up a lot of courage to say this, and at first, I thought I would say it without hesitation, but I felt a little shy and panicked when it came to my mouth. She laughed and said she thought so, but he didn't want me to say it out of a delusion.

"If it's because you felt this way last time you ate at my place. She said, "That's a different story." ”

She said that the reason she asked me what I liked to eat that day was because she knew that most unmarried men liked their mother's cooking. At that time, she saw that I was gradually moving in the direction of changing my concept of marriage, and she needed to make a more radical change for me. She knew that the reason for my change of mind was the guilt of her mother, and that's why she did it. She needed to translate this guilt into more immediate action, believing that I had a self-effacing personality despite my conceit about life. Her meal is not enough to change me, but it is like a bait that will make me fall into the hook of worldly life, so that I will be pulled back to the river bank of reality step by step. So, she told me to go back and think about it again, and what she needed was a decision that wasn't triggered by that meal.

The first time I talked to my mother on the phone, I mentioned the girl on a blind date, and I told her that I would get married, and that I wanted to get married, not because of the persecution of the world. My mother began to return to her old state, taught me more about marriage, and wanted to see the girl. I asked the girl out again, still sitting on the high stone pile by the river, and told her with a serious look that the reason I wanted to marry her was not for the meal.

"Not that meal, indeed. I said, "It's me." ”

She kept staring at the flowing water under her feet without saying a word, and I was so impatient to wait for her reply that I was even afraid that she would come up with a word of rejection and let everything pass away with the flowing water under her feet, and never to be found again. I began to tell her my stories, from the first time I saw Hai Linlin, Teacher Ou bought my paintings, went to the city by the sea, learned piano from Qiu Pei, the straw factory owner who committed suicide, the dancer who resembled Hai Linlin, and the reunion between me and Hai Linlin. I didn't hesitate to tell her that I was taken away from me in that dark room by a woman I had never met and never knew whose it was, and that there were all kinds of women who had sex with me later, and that I had a history of getting venereal diseases because of my search for flowers and willows. I listened to the murmuring of the water under my feet and told her, although I didn't say it with any emotion, and I didn't want to confess to her with repentance, but I still hoped from the bottom of my heart that she could know my unknown past, know what kind of life I had experienced, let her see what I was like in the past, and decide whether to marry a man who had the experience of being spurned by the world, and get along with each other in the days to come. And she's the only one who knows about me, and the only one I want to talk to.

By the time I finished speaking, the night had covered the entire riverbed, and I could not see her eyes, all I knew was that she did not interject a word as I spoke, and I kept telling my story to the river with a blank face, as if it were to the flowing water in the river, not to her. We were silent for a long time, as if we were going to wait until the night cleared to take away all the stories I had told me. I felt the cold wind wafting across the river from across the river, and I just waited for her answer, but she didn't say anything.

"I think. I said, "You should probably say something, even if it's 'so cold.'" ”

It was a long time before she said, "It's not cold at all, I just don't know what to say." Her voice reached my ears through the darkness that crossed between us. Then she said that it was not too early, and that we should all go back early. At that moment, I thought she had given up on me completely, that she had seen my vile side, and that she had understood how ridiculous the words of praise and praise she had used in her previous emails to me, but I thought it was not too late for her to know even then.

In those days, I was in a daze, and I was actually stuck in the longing for the blind date girl, although I knew that nothing could happen anymore, but I still analyzed her situation as I used to analyze Hai Linlin in my heart. I have always told myself in my heart that I have to make my own decisions about everything in the world. One day, I met Hai Linlin in the elevator, I pretended to say good morning to her, and she wished me good morning. When she got off the elevator, I asked her what brand of shampoo she used, and it always smelled like this. She turned around, and I pressed the door button to prevent the elevator door from closing.

"It's been changed a long time ago. She said, "I don't know why you feel the same all the time." ”

When I got off work that day, the blind date girl called me to ask me to go to her place for dinner, she wanted to make fried shredded potatoes, hoping that I could buy a few green peppers downstairs when I went up. At that moment, a flock of birds was passing through the thin and clean sky of March, and I realized that her long silence by the river that night was not out of rejection of me, but because she was thinking about what time and how to answer me. I carried the green peppers I had bought downstairs with her, and a new set of painting supplies—I had promised her to paint a portrait of her. I used my phone to shine on the dimly lit stairs and walked towards her room. I was a little nervous about meeting her, and I was about to talk to her about our engagement.

The moment I knocked on her door, I was thirty-two years and two hundred and twenty days old.

(ENDS)