The mother guards the child to grow up, and the person is older, washing and cooking, eating, wearing, living and traveling every day, when the door arrives, everything has to worry about tiredness, getting up and sleeping in the middle of the night, the heavy burden of housework and heavy economic pressure, the mother is so tired that she can't stand upright. Seeing this embarrassment, the father wanted to find a child daughter-in-law for the third child (Zhang Xuexi) to help with housework to alleviate the mother's overwork.

My father asked Liu Jiahuai, who lived in Liubei Village, Geshui, to help (Liu Jiahuai's father was my grandfather's aunt), and Jiahuai Laobiao carefully visited and selected, and selected a fifteen or sixteen-year-old village girl who couldn't read a few words in Lincun. One day I brought my family to meet, and both parents were very satisfied, so they gave a dowry gift, and soon the child's adopted daughter-in-law entered the door of our Zhang family. Her name is Cai Zai - the future daughter-in-law of the third brother.

At that time, the third brother Xuexi was studying in high school at Tianyuan National 13th Middle School, and he came back for vacation during the winter and summer vacations to do some housework. When he saw such a rural girl, he was full of unhappiness, but he couldn't disobey her parents' orders, so he had to resist in an unreasonable way.

Cai Zai is smart and capable, diligent and neat, does not need much guidance from adults, will do housework smoothly, mother many things let her deal with, parents see her every day hard work and complain non-stop work and do things, from the heart of the happy, treat her as their own daughter. But Cai Tsai knew that the third brother didn't like her, so he could only endure it silently and painfully.

Cai Zi is medium-sized, with a goose-egg-shaped face, white and yellow, slim, friendly to his neighbors, straightforward, very gentle to adults, caring for us, and never scolding.

At that time, my family planted a lot of vegetables, and I let her sell the surplus in the market, and when she came back to settle the accounts with her mother, she could calculate all kinds of vegetables and prices clearly, and never dropped a copper in private. Because he will be the director of the house and make careful calculations, he is even more popular with my parents.

Whenever the third brother came back, her mother always asked her to send the washing water, and she was also generous, first to get hot water, and then carefully test the temperature of the water with her hands, and I didn't know where to buy a new foreign towel and a piece of soap, and sent it to the third brother. The third brother was expressionless and dismissive, just washed his face, turned around and walked to the study after washing. But she never got angry, and still served her parents and third brother with hope, and after a long time, she was even more dedicated to her third brother.

The third brother never said a word to her, and never looked at her squarely. Usually, as long as the third brother's clothes and other things are left in the study, she picks them up and washes them very carefully, she thinks that my man is a scholar, the clothes are clean, worn on the body, refreshing and decent, and her duty is done.

As the third brother grew older, his parents were ready to marry them, but he didn't expect his father to die of tetanus in 1943, and the sudden change in the family, the marriage was postponed to the second year, and he was preparing to do a happy event. It's really "the swallow building is empty, where is the beauty?" Empty lock building in the swallow. (Su Shi, "Eternal Happiness, Pengcheng Night Stay in Swallow Tower")

Later, when the mother saw that Cai Zai had grown up and her marriage with her son was hopeless, she told her, you can find a partner by yourself, and you should start a family. Later, she met herself, and her mother was grateful for her hard work in the past few years, and married like her own daughter, and did her best to let her marry lively.

The third brother's fateless marriage has given Caizai a comedy new life, which is really a great luck in misfortune!

……

In 1946, my mother was worried about finding a daughter-in-law for the fourth child, me (nicknamed Mao Lingzi). I was born in May 1928 at the age of 18. It is said that my mother visited many homes, and finally the matchmaker chose to live in Yanfang Jingtou Village, Jintan Township, Shuixi, and the descendants of the great-granddaughter of our distant grandfather of the Zhang family. I was in my first year of high school at Amarahara Luzhou Middle School, and one day during the summer vacation, I saw a middle-aged woman with a little girl coming to my house, and my mother was smiling with her like an acquaintance.

I looked curiously, the guests were strange, I had never seen before, the woman was in her forties, and the little girl was about fourteen or fifteen years old. Before lunch, my mother pulled the corner of my clothes, took me to the inner room, and said in a whisper:

"This is the daughter-in-law I found for you, take a closer look and see if it works. And repeatedly told me not to lose my temper even if I was not happy, and to be polite to the guests,......。 ”

At the dinner table, I only cared about eating for myself, and in order not to be rude, I just said dryly: "Please eat food", and buried my head in eating mine. The woman talked so much, and after drinking two more cups, she talked even more. Praise how this girl is capable and sensible, and praise her for being good-tempered, considerate, and educated (graduated from primary school)...... praised her daughter as if she was "unparalleled in the world, rare in the world", praised while drinking, and spat at the mouth when she was proud.

Mom didn't care, she seemed to be very happy, and her face was full of sweet smiles. I looked up at the little girl, with a round face, a high nose, a little red face, two small pigtails dragged behind me, and a Yangdanshilin cloth dress, covering her healthy body, looking very decent. She lowered her head, her mouth half open, and chewed slowly. From time to time, her mother put vegetables in her bowl, indicating that her mother was very satisfied, she may be a newcomer, sorry, Si Swenwen, quite restrained.

I put down the bowl first, said "you eat slowly" and left the table, so I sat in the distance and watched the movement. When the woman was drunk and full of food and wiped the table and swept the floor, the little girl immediately took the rag and broom and began to work, and her mother saw it and smiled on her face.

When everything was packed, my mother called me to come and sit down, and then I saw the woman take out a folded red paper from her breast pocket, lift it in her hand, and unfold a long gift list, which reads:

100 kg of meat, 30 kg of fish, 20 kg of chicken, 20 kg of duck...... 3 pieces of gold and silver jewelry, 5,000 yuan of gifts, 4 pieces of clothes at four o'clock, 4 pairs of shoes, and 1,000 yuan of rouge gouache. ……

The two-foot-long red paper was full of writing. I leaned against my mother and looked at it amused, and my mother looked at the woman with a smile on her face, and the woman was embarrassed. I said angrily, "That's talking about relatives, selling women, and it's more expensive than pork." Mom glared at me and I walked away angrily.

The mother also felt that the bride price was too high and too heavy to marry, so she politely declined the marriage and never mentioned it again. Mao Lingzi's engagement was gone, but it caused the family and neighbors to take this matter as a joke, saying that our family was poor and couldn't talk about a daughter-in-law, and my mother also felt very guilty, because the family was in difficulty, so she couldn't agree to this family business.

But for me, it didn't matter at all, as if I wasn't telling my daughter-in-law, because I thought I was going to go to university.

My mother was heartbroken about the marriage of our three brothers, but in the end, it was a bamboo basket to fetch water - it was empty.

Ay! It's really pitiful for the hearts of parents all over the world, who have worked hard for their children and grandchildren!

When my father was alive, I was always busy picking up the vegetable patch when I came back from school, and Sister Hui and my brother carried water to fight the drought and carefully cooked the vegetables in the vegetable patch. My father tried his best to improve the family's life, and hard work became a normal thing, so he was able to provide for himself. Usually no guests come to never be willing to buy some meat dishes, even tofu is a luxury for us, we don't often eat, life is so hard, but the family can be harmonious, share weal and woe, and be happy.

Due to years of fatigue and extreme lack of nutrition, my mother gave birth to more than a dozen children in succession, and before the age of forty, she was all senile, her body was so thin that she had to wear a cotton jacket in June, so strong in spirit, supported the family with a great maternal spirit and raised us to grow up.

It is gratifying that in 1957, when she was 62 years old, she was fortunate to go to the eldest brother and third brother in Island Province, and enjoyed a happy life for 20 years, and died in Island Province in 1977 and was buried in Daobei City at the age of 82. A farewell in 1957 became a farewell between her and her children in the mainland.

I'm so sorry for my mother, I couldn't provide for a day when she was alive, I couldn't serve the decoction when she was critically ill, I couldn't keep the coffin when she was buried, and I couldn't go to the cave when she was buried. I am ashamed of my mother's nurturing kindness, and I owe my mother so much! My parents left us, so I had to paint porcelain statues of my parents for the younger generations to pay respects to, so as to express the memory of me and my children and grandchildren to the second elder.

By the time I write this memoir, the descendants of their old family are: four sons, four daughters, twelve grandsons, four granddaughters, six great-grandchildren, and seven great-granddaughters. It can be said that the descendants are developed, Lan Gui Tengfang, and there are successors, which is to comfort the souls of the ancestors in the sky.

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