Mother lived in the old house, the old cat accompanied.
When my father was alive, I was able to get a lot of food every year, and after the harvest, the old house with its wooden structure hid a large number of rats, which required a competent cat to help the owner defend the fruits of his labor. And the original one, inexplicably disappeared in the dusk of an autumn day, parents cut the call for a few days, and asked around the neighbors to pay more attention, even if the cat has nine lives, but ultimately failed to get its whereabouts, whether it was accidentally eaten the medicine dead rats, or was taken away, unknown.
So, a skinny, bony cat became the youngest member of the family. When I first met the kitten, I had just managed to jump out of the farm gate and get a job at one of the schoolhouses. I came home for the weekend and was the first to meet this new member, and, at the same time, to learn that the previous cat had gone missing.
This cat was ugly, extremely skinny, with a messy coat, a hoarse purr, and a gait so ungraceful that it was almost offensive. It came from my mother's hometown, a few dozen miles away in a mountain valley called Hongyankou, and it took my father most of the day to find this ugly cat, and the owner was so nostalgic that he generously gave it to me. The father carried the little creature home in the moonlight, and the mother was so impressed that she greeted the new member with a bowl of noodles, and the ugly cat was given high hopes.
The cat was big. A few months later, its physique is actually robust, two whiskers are particularly powerful, eyes shot out of the ghostly blue light, the body hair is also new, like brocade. It had grown into a valiant defender, and in the years since, there had been few rats in the house on a large scale.
About six years ago, the cat suddenly became lazy, especially at night, not even bothering to purr, nestled in a warm place, purring. Sickbed father, the fruits of hard labor extraordinarily cherish, without the supervision of the cat, the mice in groups, free to come and go, unscrupulous, noisy, my father could not stand it, with a bamboo pole knocking on the board wall, as a way to stop the madness of the rats. Mother also scolded, you lazy cat. Scolding like a needle to the father's heart, about the sick man, it is inevitable that a few more heart. My father was not a good eater, and he was a hard worker.
Despite the neglect of duty, it is no less loyal. After my father's death, the only person who could spend time with my mother was, surprisingly, this bloated cat with a gait. In a long, drawn-out period of loneliness, she and the cat lived together, with the mother promising her food and the cat returning the favor, as they searched for each other's warmth in the cold old house.
On days when I go home to visit my mother, I call out to the cat. The old house in the setting sun, has been patchy, the fat cat drooped under the wall, eyes slightly closed, did not move, just "meow" a little, counted as a shallow response.
The cat is old, and it has lived in this house for more than ten years. My mother's shadow is on the old wall, swaying in the mountain wind, an old man who can be blown down by a gust of wind, an illustration of how old she is. Go live in the city for a while, I tried to convince my mother. She lifted her face, a thin, frosty strand of hair straggling in the evening breeze, a long, impenetrable cloud in the corner of her eye, the result of years of eye disease, and a faint smile that gave away the secret of her teeth, what was left of them, the gums clearly visible.
Mother is older than the cat. She had traveled from ravine to ravine, staying for more than forty years. The city people of her age were dancing, playing Tai Chi, and enjoying their old age, while she, my mother, had to stubbornly hold on to a lonely life, and what a bleak life it was!
It is necessary to go to see the eye disease, plus a mouthful of teeth. After several attempts to persuade me to relent, my mother refused for a number of reasons. She was relieved to have two pigs, six chickens, a few barns of grain, a few stacks of firewood, and bacon, and so on. All these worries could be solved by hiring a reliable caretaker, I reassured my mother. The cat will not get used to it, she was adamant, her eyes looked around the old house covered with thick soot, faintly threw a sentence, gold nest, silver nest, not as good as their own mud nest. I could only snicker, you are worried that someone else carried away the old house.
It's not hard to imagine what a long and difficult job it is to convince an old man in the countryside. The mother used the old age to bring the son into the middle age, and I do not yet know, she has put the roots y rooted in the square inches of the place, the slightest movement, will be withered. This old house that she has been in and out of for decades, how can she be away from her for ten days and half a month.
Mother should have been born into a family of scholars, grandfather in the pre-liberation period is a gentleman, writing a clear small regular script, grandmother's ancestors are rich family, quite a lot of land, wrapped in a three-inch gold lotus. After those turbulent years, Grandpa became a farmer and Grandma tiptoed into the fields. When my mother came into the world, she had a very difficult time, and in a large family, survival was the first priority. The grandfather had no time to teach his children, and his mother could not read or write, but she did learn to live a life of hardship.
Young father, the only wealth is the old mansion left by the ancestors, empty, black, until decades later, my mind still remains some memories related to the old mansion, like a thick black cloud can not be melted. High steps, high thresholds, dark roofs, dark walls, uneven floors, the center hall, pasted with a portrait of Chairman Mao, warm and compassionate.
Even with such a terrible reality, my mother still married without a second thought, with her hard-working hands and an unbelievably resolute heart. At the end of the People's Commune, my parents had to work hard to earn work credits, leaving early and returning late. I had to look after the house, the memory is deep or from hunger and fear, usually, three or five year old children's memory is fuzzy, but I am an exception, stayed in the darkness of the old house all day, often hungry mouth, kind passers-by occasionally rewarded half a sweet potato. The old house is gloomy, in a young mind constantly visualize horrible scenes, I can only resist helplessly.
When I was almost six years old, my mother launched the construction of the house. The old mansion had fallen into disrepair and was no longer sheltered from the elements, or had had enough of the neighborhood's chicken scratch and planned to avoid it. My uncle was a well-known senior carpenter, he wanted to help his brother, Grandpa came from dozens of miles away, with two buckets of grain, as well as hoes and tools, my father and then the central solid family borrowed some money and food, all kinds of craftsmen were invited, the construction of the house into the implementation stage.
I was extremely happy to finally escape from the old house. I had to do my part, so I became my mother's helper, picking up wood chips for firewood, carrying bowls and chopsticks gently, and my mother was so happy that she secretly rewarded me with a piece of fat. In the winter of 1982, we finally lived in a new house without windows and doors, that winter was particularly cold, snow and early, I was freezing in the house jumping around, but the heart is extraordinarily warm, parents planning, another spring, have to send me to school to study.
The house is built of tiles, warm in winter and cool in summer, with wooden verandahs, plus footstools, which show the ethnic flavor, and newly planted fruit trees next to the house, and in spring, peaches and plums, bees and butterflies, and the weak streams and gullies around the house, leaving a sweet spring and a cool, and to this day I have not yet been able to find another spring, so sweet, such as the taste of home.
The days of staying at home are fewer and fewer, and I have to go to school. The road away from home and the road back home is getting longer and longer, out of the parents in the rice paddies at the edge of the long gaze, shadow and exhortation has become blurred, the earth house is still clear, yellow and brown walls have long been mottled.
The color of the walls is heavy, but it is no match for the life of a mountain man.
No highway, you have to take the goat path, the man in the mountains, pestle and mortar never leave the hand, the city people do not know what pestle and mortar, only recognize the capital T. The meager output has to be carried back to the mountains to sell, in exchange for the necessary means of production, and then back, and so on, the surplus is not see more, if someone at home is a student, will certainly be stretched to the limit. The last time I went home in high school to ask for living expenses, my father was carrying a bag of 50 kilograms of bicarbonate of carbon on his back, struggling to climb the mountain road, and when he heard that he needed money, he was terrified. He had been loyal to the land all his life and lacked craftsmanship; every penny he earned was drenched in sweat, and every penny he spent had to be put to good use.
Every holiday when he was studying, he had to participate in all kinds of labor, which was more profound and effective than school education. Every time I hear the sighs of my parents echoing from the dimly lit old house, I think of all the hardships of the mountain people, and I immediately think of running away. This is exactly the expectation of the fathers and mothers, who used their hardships and humiliations to drive their children out of the mountains in search of a more dignified life. Some years later, even though labor skills have been abandoned, I still sincerely respect labor and the people who live by it, even if they don't always live a dignified life. But there are so many young people who hate labor, do not learn, and just enjoy themselves, and throw the good quality of hard work into a mess, so it is really sad.
The old house was lonely after all, and I went from one village to another, interpreting life in another way of labor. Father lying in the former field, adjacent to the road out of the mountains, a slightly lonely country road, occasionally a steam whistle to break the quiet of the ravine. Only the mother shuddered as she swung in and out of the wooden door, the old cat following her like a shadow.
Lonely old houses are getting more and more, children are thinking of living their own lives, or because of the squeeze of life, had to leave behind a few elderly people in their old age, so that they continue to burn the hometown of the cooking smoke, not to the home completely deserted. Prisoner of the old man in the homeland, only in the pale twilight devouring loneliness, the old house must still remain in the sigh.
When I remembered the old house in the ravine, the computer is floating out some lyrics, water wood carnival singing, it is our old house.
The old house of my in-laws, with its small windows
The sunlight came in and told me of sunsets and sunrises
The small tree outside the door was a gift of love
You picked out a day's worth of flowery cloth for our windows
My dear old house, with you by my side, was a lonely place
It was a bit of a tough life back then
Love was the only thing that kept us together
The old house was the only thing that kept us together
The old house was the only thing that kept us together. p>
......
My dear old house is still where it was
And where you are is only the happiness of my memories
No matter where I am now, I love you as you were then
......