01
A few days ago, I was chatting with a reader friend, and unknowingly talked about some of the topics of "life".
Maybe it was a feeling, in the chat, the friend issued a "life is like grass" sigh. I didn't know how to take this sentence, staring at the chat box for a long time after the stay, I slowly back to the sentence "Maybe, we are mostly like grass, right ......".
That night, sitting in front of the windowsill, listening to the faint sound of music that may be the accompaniment of the square dance in the distance, wearing the moonlight, my thoughts flew to Wangjiazhuang thousands of miles away.
02
In the northwest corner of Wangjiazhuang near Dakeng, a remote boundary, as long as I can remember, there has been an old lady who does not like to talk.
Because I had to go to and from school in front of her house, at that time, I did not often take the afterglow to sneak a look at her.
The old lady and the other old ladies in the village seem to be a little different - the other old ladies, once they see a small child on the side of the road, they will take the initiative to go forward to ask the child's history, even if the child does not want to answer coyly, they will try to find out the child's details.
But the old lady was seldom curious about the children who passed by the door, no matter how much noise the children were making on the roadside, she was still focusing on her own hands busy with her work.
At first, I thought that she was an "old maid" - in my impression at that time, only an "old maid" would be so reluctant to deal with children. But then my mother told me that not only was the old lady not an "old family", but she also had many children and grandchildren.
The old lady's husband's family name is Liu, the eldest son's family lives in the village south of the tree line on the side of the son, the second son's family in the village west of the river gully next to thirty years ago, her three daughters married out.
"During the festivals, her family was as lively as the October meeting!" -- Although my mother said this, I have never seen Mrs. Liu's house as lively as my grandma's.
What's more, I've never seen her family as lively as my grandma's house.
03
Because her partner had long since left, Mrs. Liu kept the old yard all by herself. Perhaps to relieve the boredom, Mrs. Liu raised a group of ducks in the yard, and every time she passed by her house, the ducks in the yard always quacked and quacked, just like a group of watchdogs.
But no matter how hard the ducks in the yard called, Mrs. Liu still did not lift her head, she or ten fingers flying peeled garlic, or frowning peeled peanuts, or clenched his teeth to the soles of the shoes ....... Once the hands are busy with things, Mrs. Liu completely ignored anything that happened around.
Such an old lady will not please the children like, each time to steal a glance at her after two eyes, I hurriedly step away.
Later, when I graduated from elementary school, I seldom had the chance to pass by her house.
Looking at the dark yellow burnt paper on the wooden door, I know the old lady is gone.
Looking at the wooden door on the dark yellow burnt paper, I know that the old lady is gone. Through the doorway to the courtyard of her house to see, the mud wall has long been collapsed most of the pressure well of the iron handle rusted out of shape, even the once shining bright stone is also covered with lush moss.
Weeds, moss, and rain are gradually erasing the traces of the old lady's life from this courtyard, and when I passed by the courtyard again two years later, I couldn't find any traces of the previous occupants, except for a few mud walls slightly above the ground, which I could vaguely see.
The old yard is gone, and along with it, the memories of the people in the village about Mrs. Liu. No one remembers what she looked like, what she did, or what she said - slowly, like the white clouds over the wheat fields at the head of the village, she dissipated into the endless sky.
04
This was the case with Mrs. Liu, and also with Mr. Peng in the west of my yard.
When he was alive, Mr. Peng was a big fan of opera, not Peking Opera, but the qinshu, which was popular in the southwestern part of Shandong Province.
Every sunny day, he always liked to hold the radio lying in the yard under the jujube tree to listen to the opera. The radio was always on loud and clear, and not only could Mr. Peng hear himself, but he could also hear me squatting in his room doing my homework.
There are not many children who like to listen to the theater, and every time I hear the cacophony of the coarse voice of the opera and the yangqin, the falling zither, the soft bow of the jinghu, the plate, the simple plate, I always like to mutter towards the west side of the courtyard, "Old man Peng is listening to the opera again!"
Peng old man naturally can not hear my muttering, he still cared about his own loud radio, there are two times, living in the east courtyard of a few old ladies thought the village to collect electricity bills - the fifth of every month, Wangjiazhuang west of the pole on the loudspeaker will be played out of the Peking Opera, which is to remind everyone to pay the electricity bill! The signal is a reminder to pay the electricity bill.
With the zither book "Yang Jiagong", I don't know how many times Mr. Peng dozed off under the jujube tree, and when the radio started to shed paint, he couldn't get out of bed.
The radio gradually sang no more, and Master Peng also left. I heard my mother say that the radio was thrown into the fire at the road festival by his son.
The fire burned the old man's broken clothes and shoes, but the radio, in addition to some of the body blackened and scorched, but still stubbornly maintained the previous shape.
After Mr. Peng's departure, the sound of the piano was no longer heard in the west yard of my house. In addition to the occasional birdsong, there is no movement in the courtyard, which used to be very noisy.
What Mr. Peng left in Wangjiazhuang, in addition to the increasingly dilapidated courtyard, is left in the center of the courtyard of the jujube tree. Every summer, the top will be full of heavy crisp jujube, but I can no longer see the old man holding a bamboo pole to beat the figure of jujube.
05
The date tree will be revitalized in the spring after it loses all its leaves, but it is not the same for people, once they are buried in the earth, they will never be seen again - in the decades that follow, there may still be some people who can vaguely remember them; but a hundred years later, even though the humble grave is still there, it will not be the same. The tomb is still standing in the wilderness, but the descendants can no longer recall the face and face of the people inside.
Perhaps, only when the children were accidentally "touched", they will be the old lady of the old candle age, open and close the mouth to read a couple of times, other than that, they will never intrude into the people's memories.
Writing here, I can not help but secretly ask in my heart, life is in a hurry, in the end, we will leave what? What we deliberately left behind, and how long can we survive in the world's memory?
I did not understand this question. That night, until the alarm clock in my room struck two marks, I could not fall asleep. My eyes constantly surfaced in front of the old grass in the old yard of Mrs. Li's house, the black jujube tree in Master Peng's house that had lost all its leaves, the more I thought about it, the harder it was to fall asleep, so I just put on my clothes and wrote this short article.
When I finished writing, the east was already white, and it must have been morning. I got up and looked out the window, the original quiet street again slowly noisy, people again in a hurry to start a new day.
---end--