After the family finished dinner, Tian E helped Niu Xiaoxia clean up the kitchen, their daughter-in-law and sister-in-law were different from others, they had no suspicion of each other, they talked about everything, like sisters.

Among the five sisters of the Niu family, Niu Xiaoxia only has a close relationship with her sister Niu Xiaoli. The other three sisters, the youngest third sister Niu Xiaomin is also nearly ten years older than her. Such an age gap does not have much intersection between their sisters, plus the three sisters got married early, and the third sister Niu Xiaomin married thousands of miles away in Jiujiang, Jiangxi. Later, her sister Niu Xiaoli followed her third brother Niu Yongqiang back to her hometown in Hunan, and it has been almost ten years since then.

In the year when the second sister-in-law Tian E was welcomed into the door, Niu Xiaoxia had just passed her eighteenth birthday, and she saw the bride with a red hijab being carried by the second brother from outside the gate to the kang of the new house. When the hijab was removed, her eyes lit up, the second sister-in-law was so beautiful!

Niu Yonghou and Tian E were introduced to each other to get married, the man's introducer was Niu Yonghou's uncle Ye Shifang, and the woman's introducer was Tian E's uncle Zhou Jimin. The man and woman went home to prepare for the marriage after seeing only one face, and a month later, on an auspicious day, Tian E was welcomed into the door of Lao Niu's house.

One day four years later, when Niu Xiaoxia, who was also going to get married, jokingly asked Tian E, why did she marry her second brother Niu Yonghou when they met? Tian E's answer was very simple, "Your brother is an honest man!" ”

Niu Xiaoxia married Yan Zhangfu after four years of love, and it is a coincidence that the two met at the wedding of her second brother and sister-in-law, so Niu Xiaoxia regarded Tian E as her matchmaker and nobleman.

Tian E and Niu Xiaoxia entered the house, the two children on the kang were still asleep, and the two of them did not go on the kang, so they sat on the edge of the kang and talked. Niu Yonghou was not good at participating in the topic of the two women, so he walked out and went to his mother's room to accompany his brother-in-law. As soon as he stepped into the door, he saw Yan Zhangfu slap his thigh and jump off the kang.

"That's right, second brother! I almost forgot, the bag of sweet potatoes that my sister-in-law brought down from Longxian County is still in the carriage, and I pulled a few bags of fine coal for my father. ”

The two old men on the kang were startled, thinking that something was wrong, but when they heard these words, they finally put their minds at ease. Wang smiled with a smile on his face, "Zhang Fu, you have been driving hard all day, so don't spend this money, you have your eldest brother at home." ”

"Mom, I'm pulling coal, and these bags of fine coal are like leftovers from coal, and they don't cost anything."

Yan Zhangfu put on his shoes and took Niu Yonghou out to the car, both of them were young and strong, and they moved a few bags of coal to the firewood room and put them away.

The cultivator held a flashlight to help, and the winter night was extremely deep, the northwest wind was blowing, and the cold was drilling into his bones. The stove chimney that extended out of Grandpa's room was still smoking, and a plastic bottle for cigarette oil was hanging from the chimney, swaying slightly in the cold wind.

Geng turned off the flashlight, opened the curtain and walked in, only to see his grandfather Niu Chuanqing sitting with his back to the door, the incandescent light in the room was only 25 watts, and the dim light illuminated the lonely back of the old man. Somehow, a little sad feeling could not help but rise in the young heart.

For as long as I can remember, I have the impression that my grandfather, Niu Chuanqing, lives in this house alone. Although the house is also an upper room, it is a separate room, completely separated from the side of the hall. Just like at this moment, in the two rooms on the other side of the hall, one is Tian E and Niu Xiaoxia chatting, and there are two cute children lying next to them; In the other room, Ye Shifang and Wang were talking with Niu Yonghou and Yan Zhangfu, who were sitting on the edge of the kang.

"Yunyun, you're here, it just so happens that the water in these electric kettles is boiled and filled, you bring it over one pot at a time, and you can wash your face and feet before going to bed later."

Niu Chuanqing commanded, got up and went to pick up a piece of coal, and the cultivator knew that this was the grandfather who was going to seal the fire and rest. There were five electric kettles by the stove, and when the winter of the past two years came, when Niu Chuanqing's room had a stove, he would boil five bottles of boiling water for the hall every night before going to bed.

Cultivating a pot of pots and carrying five bottles of boiling water to the hall, Grandpa Niu Chuanqing also sealed the stove, closed the door and turned off the lights and fell asleep.

It was almost nine o'clock in the evening, when Niu Xiaoxia saw her sister-in-law Tian E talking and yawning from time to time, she got up to go back. In the house over there, Niu Yonghou and his brother-in-law Yan Zhangfu were chatting about things in the farmland, roughly saying that this year's winter is snowing well, and next year's harvest is estimated to be no worse. If you invite a customer to the door, the two families will ask for a dial, so that it is easy to negotiate the price.

Niu Xiaoxia came over and greeted her uncle Ye Shifang and her mother Wang, saying that she was going back. The little couple couldn't resist the old lady's enthusiasm, so they had to reluctantly say goodbye at the door under the send-off of the family. When she got into the car, Tian E filled a bag of sweet potatoes and stuffed them into Xiaoxia's hands.

Xiaoxia wanted to be polite, but her mother Wang opened her mouth and said, "Your sister-in-law gave you, don't push it away, it's just a bag of sweet potatoes, and it's not a rare thing." Xiaoxia complained to her mother and got into the car with the bag.

Seeing the car drive across the bridge and have already walked to the vicinity of the lime kiln uphill on the side of Hegu Road, the family turned around and came in, washed their faces and feet, and went to sleep on the kang.

Niu Gengqian grew up on the kang on his grandmother's side since he was a child, and when he slept, he and the old lady shared a quilt, and his father-in-law Ye Shifang himself was a quilt. The place where the kang was against the wall was made of wooden planks and raised half a foot, and two wooden boxes were placed side by side. Ye Shifang slept next to the box, there was a little embroidered black pig pillow in the middle, grandma slept on the other side against the wall, the rope of the light switch was on this side, she pulled the lamp rope, only to hear the sound of "click", and the house fell into darkness.

Outside the grandmother's window, against the wall of the corridor, the chicken coop was covered, and occasionally there was a few "clucking" sounds of the chicks squeezing each other. The winter night was extraordinarily quiet, and the father-in-law and grandmother who were asleep on both sides of the plough soon began to snore slightly, and he saw the moonlight shining on the dark shadows cast on the curtains on the vines on the grape trellis outside the window, and the blurs were randomly intertwined, just like his heart at the moment, he only felt that there were thousands of things that he didn't understand, and he couldn't understand.

"Maybe you'll know when you grow up!" Cultivating thought to himself, his eyelids became heavier and heavier, and he gradually fell asleep.

It's 1989 after New Year's Day, and there is still more than a month before the Lunar New Year.

Early in the morning on New Year's Day, Niu Yonghou and his wife Tian E moved two sacks of Chen Mai out, and her mother Wang instructed them to dig up the wheat in the past two days, and when it cooled down, they went to grind the flour to be eaten for the New Year in advance.

Since it is New Year's Day, and it is a weekend, Uncle Niu Yongfeng and Aunt Niu Xiaoling will come back. After ploughing and reading a few paragraphs in the morning, his father-in-law Ye Shifang let him rest for a day. Since the amount of recitation has been added to the cultivation, this has not been stumped. Of course, Ye Shifang will choose suitable poems for cultivation to memorize every day, such as "Song of Long Hatred" and "Pipa Xing" and other poems that are too long, and he will only be asked to memorize one poem a day.

Reciting ancient poems is a simple memory, and it does not allow Niu Geng to understand anything, but he himself will ponder what those poems say after reciting them. Father-in-law Ye Shifang never talked about what those poems represented, but just said that you should memorize them, and when you grow up and go to school, you will naturally know.

Cultivating is looking forward to growing up, and when he took two milk bottles to make milk powder for his younger brothers, he thought so, but at the moment he was thinking that his younger brothers would be able to play with him when they grew up.

The younger brothers drank Guanshan whole fat sweet milk powder, most of which was transparent, and the lower part of the package was green Guanshan meadow, and there was a black and white cow on the grass. The milk powder inside is in small bags, and the cultivators will occasionally secretly take a bag and eat it dry, which is accompanied by the sweetness of the milk fragrance, which is better than the feeling of drinking it.

The two younger brothers can drink it by themselves, they will also eat some millet porridge or corn treasures every day, and their mother will also steam two small bowls of egg custard for them every once in a while, dripping some sesame oil, and adding a little salt. Every now and then, the cultivator will always be by the side to help, after all, the egg custard can also be rubbed for a bite or two, he likes the tender feeling, and the saltiness with the smell of sesame oil, faintly melts in the mouth, leaving a little aftertaste.

At ten o'clock in the morning, Uncle Niu Yongfeng came back on a bicycle, and there was bound to be a fruit or two in the basket in front of him, and a black handbag with golden Shanghai characters and patterns hanging on the handlebar. When he pushed his bicycle up the short slope and entered the courtyard gate, the old lady Wang was holding a bamboo cover and filtering it in a large aluminum basin to scoop the washed wheat into the dustpan. Tian E squatted on the edge of the dustpan, picked out some visible wheat mangs or small sundries with her hands and threw them away, and when the dustpan could not fit inside, she carried it to a few mats not far from the yard to spread it out.

"Mom!"

Niu Yongfeng shouted, he parked his bicycle next to the firewood shed, and walked to the hall with his leather bag and the fruits in the basket. "Oh, my eldest son is back!" The old lady Wang glanced up, immediately put down the work in her hand, stood up and followed.

Cultivator lifted the curtain from his parents' room and called "uncle".

Niu Yongfeng answered, put the leather bag and fruit in his hand on the large round table in the middle of the hall, and asked his mother who came in later, "Mom, where is my uncle?" Why didn't you see anyone? ”