Picture/protagonist himself

Grandma is my father's grandmother, and she has a rough life. Like people born in that era, she experienced all the hardships of the old society. However, my kind-hearted grandmother died at the age of 102! It can be described as a longevity star in the eyes of the people!

As far as I can remember, grandma seldom talks, but mostly talks to herself. She always has a smile on her kind face, and she can always perceive her inner vicissitudes and sadness through her smile. I don't know, I haven't asked, and I don't want to ask: Why does grandma live in our house? Mom and dad who are not good at words have never talked about it. It was not until I was sensible that I vaguely learned something from my father's after-dinner conversation. My father graduated from high school at the age of fourteen, and he followed my grandfather to do hemp business. Business is very big. My grandfather goes out early and comes back late every day, overworked and overworked. He died soon after he got sick! Later, my father became a doctor in the commune hospital.

After grandpa left, grandma was really sad, but she just shed tears silently for several times, instead of crying her eyes out like the aunt and sister-in-law in the village after her death. After cleaning up the housework, he moved to our house with his belongings.

From the day I can remember, I knew that I grew up snuggling in my grandmother's arms, and I often heard him nag about several things: Xihe Garden irrigated by running water was built by your grandfather (running water is to cut the water above into a reservoir and irrigate the farmland below), which is your home, and it produces 800 kilograms of wheat per mu without fertilization; Your grandfather was so bitter that he was scared to drink and liberate Jinan. Before liberation, his grandfather worked as a brewer in Jinan and died in his forties!

Grandma was in poor health for a year or two. Physical pain, mental torture, and poverty in her family made her unbearable. After nagging my grandmother all night, I went to my aunt and my second aunt's house the next day. Grandma is a cultural person (grandma can read, but she is not good at writing and likes to joke). She is far-sighted. She married her elder sister-in-law who was nine years older than her, and her second aunt married her second uncle who was ten years older than her three generations. At that time, adult male workers earned 10 points a day, while adult female workers earned 8 points a day, although the labor efficiency was the same; Old people and teenagers may be 6 points and 5 points, depending on how the team leader and accountant demarcate you. Distance is related to distance. Mothers and sisters work as hard as male laborers and use "one pot stew" (sweet potatoes, wild vegetables, money, etc.) to maintain the survival and "development" of the family. ); Grandma always sits on the bluestone fence at the gate, watching the path of Xishan and the sunset, looking forward to the return of grandma, dad and uncle, and looking forward to the end of this painful day.

My father is the oldest of my parents. He works as a doctor in the commune hospital and has little time to go home. 1970 winter, the weather is really cold. One night, the snow has covered the earth, and the goose feather snow is still whispering. Grandma stuffed an old cotton-padded jacket bag into the second sister and said to me, "You are a man. Go to the commune with your sister to see your father! " "On the way, I walked along the narrow path on the western hillside, listening to the creaking sound of stepping through the snow, and I had an unspeakable taste in my heart. Looking back, I looked at a few lines of footprints like question marks and exclamation marks, asking about heaven. Warning future generations? It's like ellipsis again. What makes people think? Looking back again, grandma is still standing next to the bluestone strip waving her hand, looking at the western hills, longing and thinking …

The snow is still falling, and the road is still long. When the little cotton-padded jacket was almost soaked, my second sister and I rushed to the commune hospital. My father lives in a small room next to the computer room. The noise of the roaring machine sizzled the window lattice. A man wearing a red armband stood at the door. His hat brim is very low, he can't see his face clearly in snowy days, and his red armband covered with snowflakes can't see what he wrote. Opening the door, my second sister and I moved into the room, only to see a glimmer of light from the black glass lamp (it must have been lit for a long time). My father is sitting under the lamp, writing something, but I can't see anything else in the room. Before father could speak, a thin man appeared in the darkness, and his voice sounded like a sissy. He said, "Ernie and the boy are here" and then carried me to a brazier. Second sister opened the package, and I found two burnt sweet potatoes, two salted eggs and half a catty of white wine in a 500 ml salt water bottle. The bottle cap was corn stalks wrapped in purple flannel strips. Second sister pushed the egg aside and handed it to me. Father pinched a small piece and stuffed it into my mouth. Most of the rest was given to the man in the room. He called me Uncle Wang. Uncle Wang didn't eat salted eggs, but took two sips at the bottle and didn't speak. After drinking wine, my father ate eggs and sweet potatoes several times, looked at me, looked at my second sister and nodded. Second sister led me out of the room with a broken cotton-padded jacket. I always wanted to look back at something, but she twisted her ear and pulled it away. Chewing an egg the size of a thumb all the way, I didn't feel very salty. The fishy taste was mixed with sweet or spicy feelings, tasting the incomprehensible and incomprehensible taste, and I walked heavily on my way home.

Stepping on the footprints that had just been flattened by heavy snow, I returned to the western hillside. From a distance, my grandmother sat on the bluestone bar next to the gate, like a giant of ice and snow. When she saw us coming up, she untied the long-breasted cotton-padded jacket and carried me back to my room. I took off my cotton-padded jacket and let me get into the already warm bed (my grandmother has an old copper soup pot to warm the bed). My grandmother baked me a cotton-padded jacket, and

Later, when my father came home, he was more open-minded and talkative. My father mostly talked about what diseases he saw, what diseases he cured and who he met. Grandma still talks about Xihe Garden the most.

After a long time, there will always be contradictions, just like a pot touching a spoon and a bowl touching chopsticks. The only protagonists in the family are the mother and grandmother, and the grandmother has the final say. Mother often quarrels with her grandmother because of rights and family chores, and she is always idle and nagging. The grandmother said that the mother and children were full and didn't even build a chicken nest; Mom was wronged. In that era when sweet potatoes and leaves were the bread of the day, not to mention that a chicken nest was a cat nest (there were more chickens than cats, so the chicken nest was much bigger than the cat nest, not to mention that most cats lived with people and didn't need a nest). Finally, the quarrel ended in mutual humility. After every quarrel, grandma will laugh and cry. The improvement of the political situation has not made the table much better. I only eat pasta occasionally, but my daily life is still confused with sweet potatoes, dried sweet potatoes and wild vegetables (it would be nice to have these foods at that time). Every time the cauldron boils water, my mother always scalds some corn flour with boiling water, makes two hemispherical "bumps" with a spoon, and cooks them in the boiling water of the cauldron (because there is no firewood and coal, the small stove is generally not turned on). This is grandma's staple food; Others can only watch, and no one is allowed to steal half a bite. Although they look greedy and swallow, fortunately, they occasionally get a little residue from the paste in the cauldron, and most of them are put into my smallest mouth, plus a salted radish strip, which is delicious enough to chew. Most grandmothers sit next to the stove (stove), and sweet potatoes drink a third bowl. Because it is too cold, pour the rest back into the pot (the pot is open, except in summer); No meat dishes, no vegetarian dishes, no soy sauce and sauerkraut, and the salted radish strips of the next meal will be broken if you are not careful. At that time, you should dip in salt water to eat sweet potatoes (salt will also go bad).

August 26th in the ancient calendar is grandma's birthday. Every year when this day approaches, she will be seriously ill. The disease came quickly and strangely. The grandmother shouted at first, then foamed at the mouth and twitched her limbs. I don't know when it became a routine. At this time, some family members pinched people, some ran to find fresh peach tree branches, and they had to be in the southeast. One branch was put in her hand and the other was whipped on her. When my father came back, I poured a dose of Chinese medicine for my grandmother and soon woke up. After eating it for a few days, it gradually got better. Because of this strange disease, my grandmother made a coffin for her death at the age of 42. For this disease, I secretly planted a peach tree for my grandmother. Although it is not tall enough, it is enough for emergency use every year, and it is also conducive to her old man sitting under the tree to recuperate. When my grandmother was ninety years old, she had eight new teeth and her pale hair turned white. My father called it "rejuvenation" What's more strange is that my grandmother has never committed strange diseases since then.

When my grandmother was 94 years old, an old boy in the village, a 37-year-old nephew of mine, got married. At that time, I heard that the new wife could drink very much, and there were not many women in the village who could drink. In addition, only women with status and age can attend the wedding banquet and drink with their new wife. On the day I passed the door, my grandmother's wedding reception with an 84-year-old aunt, a 74-year-old sister-in-law and several relatives was gone. I didn't know how much they could drink at that time. At sunset, my mother saw that my grandmother had not come home, so she asked me to have a look. Walking into the gate, I saw my 94-year-old grandmother holding my 84-year-old aunt and my 84-year-old sister-in-law holding my 74-year-old sister-in-law. The three of them are still laughing, which is really in stitches. In my memory, it was the first time that my grandmother smiled so brightly and happily.

1July, 983, I was admitted to the university in a daze. On the day of school, my grandmother said, "When I go to college, I have a big university, and I have a lamp and a telephone. I want to find a daughter-in-law to fry sorghum (in the late 1970s and early 1980s, women's perms rose, but it seems that most people are not used to it, so the perm hair is called sorghum root-commonly known as sorghum stir-frying); Eat the national treasury (beam), live in a tall building, and find a perm! " Grandma said, don't care about people when doing things outside, remember that "a big heart is not as big as a big thing, and a big heart can make a big thing." Since then, college life has opened the distance between me and my grandmother, but I will always remember her entrustment.

1985 Summer vacation, I saw my grandmother again. She said to me, "I'm leaving. I'll meet my nephew and daughter-in-law before you get married." It's not easy for your grandmother in her eighties to have a birthday (as a folk custom, as long as there are old people, the younger generation can't have a birthday or a birthday). She will never have this kind of treatment or this kind of opportunity until I die ... "

1986 It was still very cold in spring, but it was much warmer on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year. In the early morning, a few sparrows were playing on the Toona sinensis tree that had just died years ago, making strange squeaks from time to time. Grandma got up, carefully washed her feet and face, combed her hair and opened her face (twisted the loose hair on her forehead and sideburns with a double thread), brushed her teeth with a toothbrush that had not been used for many years, had a few drinks with her father, ate a big bowl of jiaozi and went back to her room. She said to her sister, "Don't ask me to have lunch. I'm tired. I've had enough sleep." At the end of lunch, everyone couldn't help calling grandma, pushing the door open, and the elder sister collapsed on the ground. I saw grandma wearing a shroud, a life-saving hat, a pair of embroidered life-saving boots, and a kind smile on her face, leaving this world calmly and peacefully, a world that made her uneasy but difficult to understand ...

After grandma died, my father, as a model of nephew's grandmother, was praised as a flash in the pan for several days. After calming down, some people think more about the bumpy and dull, kind and long life of the old man.

Author Li Hengping, director of surgery in the Eighth People's Hospital of Jinan, likes literary creation.