I stood in the Yuan Ye in the distance, with my eyes closed and my head slightly tilted, smelling the air and the smell coming from afar. When my hair moved, I knew he was coming, and then it was her. Oh, what a familiar smell. I was afraid that he would leave in a hurry, so I quickly opened my eyes, looked for her and touched her. She knows me, lingers around me, shows up at my fingertips, and finally condenses into a picture in front of me: my mother is wearing an apron, busy in front of the stove and chopping board, crouching down from time to time, adding all kinds of straws to the stove chamber, and the stove chamber is full of fire, reflecting my mother's face red.
I want to say that where there is smoke, there is home, and where there is home, there is warmth. The smoke in my hometown is full of the smell of home, the smell of my mother, my mother's smile, my mother's call, my mother's thoughts and expectations for the wanderer.
Mother is a very ordinary woman, and ordinary can no longer be ordinary. There are eight brothers and sisters, and she ranks third among women. At that time, food and clothing was a problem, let alone going to school, so she couldn't read, even 123. Since she married her father and entered this family, she knew that she had to cook three meals a day, weed the fields, carry water and dung, and feed chickens and pigs. When she is free, she will sit down and pull a pair of thousand layers, embroider a pair of flower insoles, and wash this to mend that.
When I was a child, when I was playing outside, I knew it was time to go home as long as I saw the smoke rising at home. Every time I go back, my head is gray and my face is gray. I always go to the kitchen first when I go back. Especially during the Chinese New Year holiday, every time I see smoke in the kitchen, I know that my mother is cooking again, either cooking the meat or frying something, so I will rush home and lie prone at the kitchen door and ask my mother what to cook and when it will be ready. Sometimes I would run to the kitchen again and again, but my mother smiled helplessly and picked a piece from the cooked food and put it in my mouth: "You greedy cat, be careful not to burn yourself."
I am a day student in primary school and junior high school, and my home is far from school. Every morning, when the sky glows, chickens bark and dogs bark. In the chimney quietly erected in our adobe house, there will be white smoke or blue smoke rising, which is my mother preparing breakfast and lunch. In my dream, in the smell of rice, I was awakened by my mother, washed, finished eating, touched my mouth, carried my mother's carefully prepared lunch box on my back, and walked to school with my partner, leaving only the intersection to watch my mother and the slow and thin kitchen smoke behind me until it disappeared. After school at night, I can see the white satin fluttering in the wind over my kitchen from a distance, and I have no intention of frolicking on the road. I go straight to my home and kitchen. As long as I dare to put it on the chopping board, I will unconsciously grab a little by hand, sometimes my mother will stop me, sometimes I will succeed, and then I will run out and let my mother nag for a long time.
Winter at that time was a bitter day for my mother. In winter in my hometown, it is often late, so I have to get to school before dawn. In this way, my mother got up before the stars went to sleep and was busy in front of her three-foot stove, making some pots and pans collide. It's very cold and there is no stove in the kitchen. My mother won't let me eat in the kitchen for fear of freezing me. Every time the meal is ready, he will take a small kang table to my sleeping room and let me sit on the hot kang to eat. At that time, my father was still working in other places and didn't come back because I was afraid of the dark. After dinner, she wants to send me to school again. In this way, she runs back and forth on that mountain road on the coldest morning in winter every day. Every year, I will see my mother's hands and feet frozen like steamed bread, bulging, and sometimes there are several blood cuts. When it was almost spring, it began to itch. She just kept fishing and got red.
It was not that I was young, but that I was heartless and ignorant. Later, I didn't understand my mother and felt sorry for her. I saw her hands and feet, and I thought she deserved it. It was natural. Slowly, I discovered that I was a piece of meat that fell from her body. The blood in this meat should be connected with my mother's blood. Then, I should be able to feel the terrible pain and unbearable itching in her hands and feet.
Sometimes God is unfair, but sometimes God is fair. My mother's ordeal finally got the result she wanted. That year, I entered the city key middle school with excellent results. Three years later, I entered the university, although it was not a key university. But it was also from that year that I saw the smoke from my hometown and my mother was busy in front of the stove. Watching me go to school is an extravagant hope, let alone eating my mother's cooking. See, I can only spend two holidays, and sometimes I don't even go back for holidays in order to lighten the burden on my family.
From that year to now, every time I go home and the bus is about to arrive at the station, I will call my mother and report the names of my favorite dishes. When I got off the bus and walked along the mountain path, I saw gray and light green smoke rising in the air. I see, it was my mother who lit the hope and expectation. I often can't help but feel moved and want to cry. Near the farmhouse, my mother looked at me when I saw it. At this time, I really want to stop and cry at the cigarette. As long as I get home, I always feel like a child, and my mother holds me, just like when I was a child. I walked into the courtyard door and kitchen, and a table of hot meals was ready.
It's good to go home, close the door, shut out the twilight and collect all my troubles and dreams. Sitting in front of the stove, adding a handful of firewood to the stove bore, pulling a bellows, helping my mother wash chopsticks and rinse dishes when the water is hot, how warm and happy it is. Parents are there, home is there, parents are there, and happiness is there.
Cooking smoke is like a flowing history, recording the bleak life of sunrise and sunset. Looking for that faint smoke and looking back at the past is a kind of feeling and nostalgia for mother and life. However, day after day, month after month, year after year, my mother's hair has long been turned white by the smoke in the kitchen. The wind took away the smoke from the kitchen and the stories of mothers, but forgot to leave their youth and beauty.