In the past, I lived in the fifth group of the second committee of the Xinxing Street Office in Anda City, and the old committee leader was called Sun Yurong, born in 1938, one year younger than me.

Her family is located in Anzhuang, Weizhaizi Commune, Yucheng County, Dezhou, and her family has more than 20 acres of land. Grandma's feet are small, it's really called a three-inch golden lotus, and she can't stand steadily. She has a good figure and good appearance, but her life is not good, she has no husband at the age of twenty-nine, and she is widowed with a son and a daughter.

My father got married when he was nine years old, and my mother was sixteen years old. Grandma asked his father to sleep with his mother, but his father was unwilling, he was afraid that it would be dark, and his father fell asleep a few days ago, and his mother carried him to his own house. He slept until dawn, his mother dressed him, and he went to find his grandmother.

Once, my father woke up in the middle of the night, touched the bed and was not grandma, crying and shouting, "I don't sleep here!" I'm looking for my mother! I'm looking for my mother! ”

The mother touched the fire chain and lit the fire, lit the lamp, dressed him, and said, "You lie on my back, and I carry you to find our mother." ”

It was the middle of the night, and my father went to my grandmother's house to stop crying.

Later, my grandmother bought sugar lumps and handed them to my mother, so that my mother could coax him with them. Since there was delicious food in the mother's house, my father went to sleep in the mother's house.

Sun's house is half a mile away from the well, in the past, the little foot grandmother used a clay pot to go to the well to carry water, the grandmother could not stand on the edge of the well, afraid of falling into the well, had to beg others to bring the water up, and carried it home. After marrying a daughter-in-law, the two of them used buckets to carry water, and the mother was also a small foot, and she had to beg someone to bring the water up, so that the two could carry it home.

Grandma often said to my mother: "When my son grows up, it will be good if I can carry water." ”

Grandma always felt that her son was aggrieved by his father, as long as he could do it, he was reluctant to ask his son to do it. The daughter-in-law married into the door, and the dirty work and tiring work were all done by the two of them, so they looked forward to their son growing up.

Dad was just able to carry water at the age of eighteen, and he was gone.

The mother asked the grandmother, "What are you doing?" ”

Grandma said, "I still want to ask you, where have I got?" ”

It was dark, and Dad didn't come back.

If you don't come back for three days or two days, you can still withstand it. I didn't come back for a month, I didn't see anyone alive or dead, I couldn't stand it anymore, and I cried every day. My mother didn't have a mother at the age of eleven, she had a brother and sister-in-law, and at the age of sixteen, she married into the Sun family to serve her nine-year-old husband, and looked forward to him growing up day by day.

More than a month later, my uncle sent my father back from Jiamusi, Heilongjiang.

The next day, my uncle's letter arrived.

My uncle said, "As soon as he arrived at my house, he asked him, 'Does the family know that you are here?' He said: 'I don't know.' I wrote that day, lest you should be worried. "I don't know where my father has gone for more than a month, and I don't know where this letter was suppressed, my grandmother and mother have cried for more than a month.

Grandma asked her father, "You want to leave, why don't you say something to me?" ”

Dad said, "Tell you, you must not ask me to go." ”

The mother stood next to her and cried, without saying a word.

Grandma said, "It's good to come back." ”

After my father came back, he picked up a handful of water every day and did nothing else. Lazy is lazy, has a big temper, which part of the mother is a little bad, the father catches it and beats it, and scolds the daughter-in-law when he says it.

When Yurong was eight years old, he dragged the neighbor's pig's tail to play, and the little pig ran forward and knocked down the other people's clay pots. The pot was broken, and if you don't pay for it, your grandmother will pay for it secretly.

Dad found out, grabbed Yurong and beat him, and peed in his trouser pocket.

When my mother was in her thirties, she gave birth to a younger brother, and she died of postpartum wind, and Yurong was eleven years old that year, and there was an older brother above. Grandma was too old to give him to a relative surnamed Liu.

When my mother was alive, I weaved and sold cloth, and when my mother died, it was even more difficult. Yurong can spin thread at the age of twelve, spin a pound of thread in five days, and the money he earns can buy ten fruits, which is what is now called fritters.

On the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month of that year, my father bought back five catties of wheat, and my grandmother dusted it and put it on the mill, and Yurong and his brother pushed it with a grinding stick. With white noodles, I ate a meal of white flour flat food on the first day of the Lunar New Year, and then I ate mung bean noodles.

On the fourth day of the first lunar month, Yurong and his grandmother went to the ground to pull out the bean fence, but they didn't pull it out and didn't burn it.

There was wind in the ground, and Yurong's little hands were red from the cold, and her grandmother said, "You pull it out quickly, and it won't be cold after pulling it out for a while." ”

Grandma is right, it's really not cold to pull it out for a while.

Grandma also said: "Those who are frozen are lazy, and those who are hungry are idlers." She has remembered this sentence for the rest of her life.

When Yurong was fourteen years old, there was an accelerated literacy class in the village, which was taught by a teacher and many people learned. A few generally big girls are on money (note: spread the money), buy a light bulb in a flashlight to illuminate, and work hard at night. The light bulbs were too expensive to buy, so they bought cottonseed oil for the money, poured the oil into a broken bowl, rubbed the lamp twist with a cotton sleeve, and turned the lamp one person a day, in shifts. During the day, she spun cotton and grinded, and she always thought about the words she learned.

Yurong was sixteen years old, and her stepmother entered the door. The stepmother has never given birth to a child in her life, and her father has a big temper, at most he scolds a few words, and he doesn't dare to beat others.

In 1957, Sun Yurong (below) took a photo with his friend Qiu Xueli when they met in Harbin. She was twenty years old. Courtesy of Sun Yurong.

In 1958, when Yurong was 20 years old, he went to Jiamusi to find his brother and worked as a temporary worker in a timber processing factory. She gets a piecework wage, works more and gets more, gets up early and is greedy for night, pushes sawdust, pulls down the saw, and she can sleep for two or three minutes. Later, the canteen of the Forestry Bureau asked for a correspondent, requiring members of the regiment to be able to write and ride bicycles, and she was qualified enough. The leader saw that she was capable, and let her work as a canteen buyer, these two jobs can open 36 yuan a month, which is considered a high salary among female workers.

After getting married in 1960, her husband went to Harbin to work, but she stopped doing those two jobs, bought 50 catties of alkali mounds in Harbin, and carried them to Jiamusi to sell. At that time, there was no yeast in the store, there were no dough starters, there were alkali blocks, and they were expensive. Northeast people use alkali to make noodles, cook big seeds, wash clothes, and wash hair, and she earns more money than her salary. If you are caught, it will be said that you are buying and selling, speculating, and confiscating. At all times, they will support the bold and starve the faint-hearted.

After Yurong settled in Anda, he took his father and stepmother to Anda, and the younger brother who was sent out also settled in Anda.

Yurong asked me to be the leader of the fifth resident group, I couldn't push it out, and after a few years, my man laughed at me: "The biggest official in China is ****, and the smallest official is you." "Five groups of more than 20 households, all of them are neighbors, and the street sometimes gives them a pair of pillow towels and sometimes two pairs of socks.

Yurong is different, there are hundreds of families in the second committee, she has a lot of things to worry about, and she only enjoys Qingfu after retirement.