Xiao Xia, my mother has been cleaning and decorating the new apartment for a while, hoping to dress up this place comfortably and stylishly.

Speaking of decorating the apartment, one of the reasons is, of course, for my mother's own comfort and happiness, but in fact, there is another reason, which is to prove to my mother's father that my taste and design are no worse than his.

In the near and long term, Dad won't have the opportunity to come to this apartment and be involved in judging whether we win or lose on this point, and Mom really doesn't want to cross paths with him again. But after four years of marriage, he finally turned into a shadow, and he could continue to talk to his mother, and even continue to live together, so naturally, he could continue to struggle. Dad's image has long had nothing to do with him, Mom feels that this phantom has more characteristics of Mom, and at the same time has a combination of Dad's appearance, he or she, in some form to accompany the real Mom, little by little, gritting teeth, as if dragging the dying body, pulling out a long blood mark on the ground, accompanying Mom to this last road containing past memories or fantasies. One day, the phantom will die completely, completely out of nowhere, at least that's how Mom hopes.

Now the design of the apartment is very different from the home you are familiar with. Mom always wanted to show her rebellious spirit in this apartment, so she tossed this apartment like a test field. Money is spent. Because it is an experiment, the imaginative design in many places will be blown up from time to time and become waste, and eventually have to be abandoned. The ideas, money and energy invested were also wasted. This is the case, for example, with floor lamps in the living room.

In fact, the design of many floor lamps is very simple. The longer my mother swims in the sea of goods, the more confident she is that she can make a simple and futuristic living room light by buying simple light strips and tubes.

Mom bought a light strip and a lampshade, as a finishing touch, Mom even bought a remote control, wanting to make the cheap light strip automated.

When the things arrived, they looked very simple and crude, but at that time my mother hadn't completely given up. After silently assembling tables and chairs, installing cabinets, beds and all possible things, my mother has a lot of ideas about the sophistication of furniture. The combination of detail and design can sometimes be successful in one place, but it doesn't have to be everything. When you think of management, it's better to complete than to be perfect.

Originally, my mother might have nailed the light strip to the wall at an oblique angle without thinking about it, and until then, my mother still carried forward with the spirit of experimentation with a try but full of confidence. But at the last moment, Grandpa took out his scornful attitude again, expressing contempt and disdain for his mother's new approach. It's like a rainstorm that extinguishes my mother's design fire in an instant.

After that, my mother fell into a brief period of self-doubt, believing that all the innovations were just rubbish. Fortunately, this stage is also like a storm, fleeting. Now the light strips, light boxes, remote controls, and a whole bunch of parts have been packed up by my mother on the balcony, and my mother has a silent cry to say goodbye to them. Although she is not convinced, her obedience and flattery to her grandfather are like a golden hoop that shrouds her in every moment of her mother's life, shrouded in every action and every thought of her mother, and her bound mother can't move.

These days, when my grandfather is not around, my mother hears the sound of the light box shaking in the wind, as if she is being called, and the desire to create is rekindled. Maybe in a few days, my mother will secretly put the despised light box on the wall, which will become a monument to self-redemption and personality nirvana, standing in a prominent position in the living room, like a banner of victory.

Although there are a lot of similar, unliked and supported design ideas, my mother still made a lot of preludes, but later received praise for the small corner. When it comes to the interesting part of the design, we have to mention my mother's dressing table.

Facing the bay window, my mother custom-made a very simple bar table, with a lonely and proud chair. The whole assembly and fixing is done by the mother herself. Speaking of which, screwing a nail into a board with bare hands is much easier than you think. However, it was difficult and impossible to keep the four chair legs balanced by tightening the screws of all the chairs at the same time. Eventually, the chairs were a little unstable, and Mom used sticky pads to balance them.

The bar itself is a very simple design, and once installed, it is very simple and even a little thin. Mom hung four paintings on the wall next to the bar. A black-and-white image of the Earth, showing a hurricane blowing, can clearly see the eye of the storm spinning upwards and sweeping across the land. The other is a photograph of Mars, not black and white, showing a yellowish-red color, and although the colors are bright, the lifeless heaviness is still revealed from the picture. On the wall a little higher is an astronaut hanging upside down, with a line below that reads Falling in Love. There is also a photo of an astronaut coming out of the space capsule in the far corner, which looks very warlike and heroic.

For the paintings on the side of the bar, my mother chose the theme of the universe and traveling through space. Space travel, exploring new planets and life, was my mother's favorite subject since she was a child. My mother used to tell you that I seem to have never changed or grown up from a certain moment, from asking a question, from liking a thing, from having a kind of fear, from that moment, or a few moments after a few things. It seems that everything in my mother's heart and mother has stopped at the front end of a long time ago, and the changes after that have come to a standstill step by step.

And I like outer space from a very young age, and from that moment on, I have never changed, I have not lost that interest because I have grown up, and I have not felt that such things are illusory and boring because of maturity. The excitement, excitement and affection of childhood, did not increase by a single point, nor did it decrease by a single point. Mom just hasn't changed since then.

Since childhood, my mother has always been excited to look forward to the day when we will put aside the trivial affairs around us and find a way that has never been seen before. For example, the sudden appearance of aliens allows us to experience the existence of life in completely different dimensions, or the sudden encounter with a planet that makes the intersection dangerous and exciting, or we decide to go to a new planet and start a completely unknown life. It's not leeks, celery, bok choy, it's not today, tomorrow, every day is the same as now.

On weekend afternoons, with a mediocre herbal tea in hand, the heat rises and fogs up the glasses. Outside the window, the dilapidated façade has been eroded, the skin of the wall is peeling, and in some places it is hanging and panting, swaying in the wind. Sanitation workers mowing the turf in the dust, closing the windows, and still hearing the roar of the motors. The neighbor was walking slowly in the yard with an old and huge yellow dog, whose eyes should have been blinded. In such an afternoon, every day is the same afternoon, my mother hopes that she can turn her face sideways and think of the sky above her head, no matter how far away, no matter how far away, there are galaxies outside the sky, and there are endless possibilities.