The Mid-Autumn Festival is approaching, the festive atmosphere is getting stronger and stronger, the fruits and vegetables in the market are fragrant, and the moon cakes in front of the cake shop are pushed into hills. China people have always attached great importance to festivals, and the crowds in the market will be bustling during festivals. Now that living conditions are good, the people are well off. There are fish and meat on the dining table, and festivals are held every day. However, traditional festivals are not sloppy at all. Perhaps this is also people's cherish and yearning for happiness.
Pick some moon cakes with different flavors and take them home for the children to taste. My son always likes sweets, and moon cakes like five-kernel stuffing. Watching him eat reminds him of his childhood. At that time, the countryside was still very poor and backward, and the problem of food and clothing was just solved. Millet and potatoes are mushy. We have been through our whole childhood, and we seldom see any meat. Only during the Chinese New Year can you eat a few vegetarian meals, and only during the holidays can you put down your stomach and eat something delicious. At that time, festivals were the happiest days in children's eyes.
Mother has always been diligent and thrifty, and she can enjoy the poor days in her hands. No matter how bad she usually eats, she won't treat her children badly during the holidays. When I was a child, I celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival with my mother's homemade moon cakes. I mixed the dough, fermented it, rolled it into small cakes, smeared it with clear oil, sprinkled it with spices, and finally covered it with big skin and steamed it in a steamer for several hours. When you eat it, cut it into cubes, and the layers of spices are colorful, which makes people drool. This is a local custom in the northern countryside, and people have been making it themselves. I'm afraid southerners can't imagine what it looks like. In fact, it is really a big and round moon cake like the moon.
I first tasted the moon cakes I bought when I was nine years old. At that time, people had not left the countryside to work outside, but all took part in collective labor in agricultural cooperatives. Dad was sent from the village to the city to collect farm manure and take charge of the toilet in the state-run hotel. At the same time, there runs a steamed stuffed bun shop, which is also a famous Tianjin Goubuli steamed stuffed bun. The manager is also from Tianjin. Dad has always been diligent and capable. The manager asked dad to help in the shop and earn some pocket money, which can also solve the problem of food and shelter. In an agricultural society, you can also earn work points all year round. In those days, it was a good job.
Later, the land was divided into individuals, and my father officially worked in the steamed stuffed bun restaurant. Occasionally, when he comes back, he can bring back some leftover buns and give us a rare treat. I remember the day before the Mid-Autumn Festival that year, my father deliberately asked for leave to come back, because the restaurant gave some moon cakes to the employees, and my father didn't want to eat them, so he specially sent them back to us. It's a round snack, wrapped in red paper. When it was opened, a fragrance wafted away and made us drool. Only six months of cake, my sister got married, and there are three of us. My mother gave us one each, and the other three were locked in boxes. I took a round dessert and took a small bite carefully. That sweet smell seems to be remembered so far.
My brother is very greedy, so he ate his moon cakes in three bites. When I was not careful, he grabbed what I had just bitten and turned and ran away. I burst into tears with anger. My sensible sister broke the moon cake in half and gave it to my wayward sister, but I kept crying. Dad couldn't stand it anymore, so he asked his mother for the medicine spoon on the box and took out a piece of moon cake locked by her mother in the box for me, and finally cheated me.
The next day, my sister went back to her family with her little niece who had just been born for a few months. My mother just opened the box and gave the two moon cakes she had hidden to her sister and children. When I was a child, I never understood why my parents were always reluctant to eat delicious food. Now, as a mother, I have to feed and dress my children first. Every time I eat, I am the last one to serve the bowl, and I am the only one who eats the leftovers on the table. At that time, the glorious tradition of mother was vividly continued here.
The lost time not only took away our youth, but also took away our parents and relatives who raised us. My father, who died young, worked hard for most of his life and became ill from overwork. When life just began to improve, he died and left us forever. My mother, who worked hard all her life, did not enjoy any return and warmth from her children, and also passed away in a hurry. What saddens me most is my brother who died young. A car accident mercilessly took his life and left us with pain that can never be erased.
When I was a child, my brother was naughty and always bullied my sister and me because he was the only boy in the family. When I was a child, I was stubborn. I often disobeyed my brother's discipline and was beaten the most. My brother is very clever. In winter, he will put a homemade bird trap in the firewood burning kang under the windowsill, shoot one or two sparrows and bury them in the kang hole to cook and eat. Every time my brother eats roasted sparrows, my sister and I watch eagerly. When he tore a wing, a bird's head and a thin neck for each of us, he occasionally gave each of us a delicious part such as a bird's leg for himself to eat. A small sparrow is actually just a bite of meat, which all three children have to share, but in that poor age, it was also a rare delicacy in our eyes.
My brother likes pigeons since he was a child. In the second grade, he caught a pair of little pigeons from his uncle's house. At first, he didn't know that pigeons only ate corn. When eating, he squatted in the yard and fished out the noodles in the bowl to feed the pigeons. Pigeons cooed and refused to eat, but chickens rushed to catch them. So my brother took a long stick and drove the chicken around the yard, attracting my mother's delicious meal. My brother's pigeons have been raised for decades, and the flock has expanded again and again, with 40 or 50 at most. He also made a beautiful pigeon whistle out of a bamboo tube. Every time the pigeons take off, the crisp pigeon whistle will reverberate over my house, attracting the envious eyes of the boys in the village.
Later, my brother went out to work, and my mother and our sisters helped feed the pigeons at home. Because of poor handling, newly emerged pigeons sometimes freeze to death, and pigeons flying out for food are often caught by others. Every time my brother comes home and sees the lost pigeon, he always complains about us. Then he fed the pigeons with a big iron bowl full of wheat grains, drove them away and let them fly around the yard. He kept looking back at them, just like looking at his beloved children.
We always feel that the future is still very long, and there are countless beautiful days waiting for us to go slowly. Time will not leave us on the road at will, but who would have thought that an accident would make the relatives connected by blood farewell and never meet again. Hearing the bad news of my brother's car accident, I sat on the balcony for a long time and couldn't get up. My tears are like broken beads, and I can't wipe them off. Compared with the death of my parents, my brother's departure made me feel deeply grieved.
I have always been a sentimental person, and I have been crying since I was a child. Now that I am old, I can't help crying when I think of my dead relatives. I have been reluctant to write articles about my family, not because I am too cold-blooded to leave my relatives behind, but because I dare not write. Every writing is like tearing an unhealed scar layer by layer. Tears are accompanied by blood, and every word is saturated with indelible sadness.
In my heart, my parents' home is my real home. After I got married, every time I went back to my mother's house, I told my mother-in-law, who would smile discontentedly and say that the water poured by my married daughter belonged to your mother's house, and this is your home. But I still stubbornly believe that no matter where I go, it is my irreplaceable home. Now I dream occasionally, dreaming of my old house when I was a child and me who will never grow up in my dreams. After my parents died, I went home less often. Later, I went to the city and got farther and farther away from my hometown. I could only visit my brother and sister on holidays. That brief gathering was so warm in my heart, at least it wouldn't make me feel like a child without a home.
However, even my brother left early in the end. Now, the old house is in ruins, nephews and nieces have moved away from home, and the iron locks on the courtyard doors are rusty. Every time I go to visit my parents and brother's grave, I always feel on pins and needles when I look at that lonely old house from a distance. If time can go back, if the deceased relatives can meet again, I will cherish every moment I get along with my relatives, instead of letting tears wet my pillow again and again in my dreams and keeping my relatives' faces.
I used to look forward to the holiday, so I can go back and reunite with my relatives after the holiday. Now I am afraid of festivals, and I am afraid that the rich festive atmosphere will touch the fragile strings in my heart. I don't know if people like nostalgia as they get older, but they always think of their dead relatives because of a feeling of deja vu. There is a large flock of pigeons in the square. My son likes to go there to buy a bag of pigeon food. Those lovely pigeons will come around to grab food and fall on people's shoulders and hands. Listening to my son's giggle, I had a smile on my face and tears in my heart, as if my brother had a fresh life tied to this little pigeon. In this world, there is no pain that can be compared with the loss of a loved one. That kind of pain is engraved in your bones and will accompany you all your life.
My sister called the day before yesterday and asked me if I would come back from the Mid-Autumn Festival. I am too vague to give a definite answer. Did I come to this city made of concrete? My heart began to get cold day by day and gradually lost its temperature. I stayed in a small pigeon coop, with strange faces upstairs and downstairs, and even my ability to speak declined day by day, but my concern for my sister never diminished. Now, apart from children, the only relatives who are related by blood are sisters who are far away from home, but there are few opportunities to meet each other. They can only ask each other by phone to report peace. There are too many feelings in life, which limit our freedom and lengthen the distance with our relatives in our hometown. It's not that we have adapted to indifference, but that we can't give ourselves a satisfactory life.
The moon climbed onto the windowsill, and the more and more plump face shone with soft light. How bright the moonlight is at home! People are folks, but how many people can only bathe in the moonlight in different places, look at their hometown and miss their hometown and relatives. That little moon cake was full of parents' deep love, so it was especially sweet. Now they are all chewing the moon cakes they bought, trying to make more exquisite and high-grade moon cakes, but they will never taste the sweet taste. No matter how much suffering life has given us, we have no choice but to bear it silently. Fortunately, there is a warm family and children who continue our blood. For them, we should live happily and cherish ourselves, so as to give the best love to the people we love.
With the development of life, more and more people leave their hometown and bid farewell to their parents and relatives. Dandelion seeds have drifted to cities and different corners of the world with the wind, rooted in hard cement and started a new life, but wherever they go, their hometown and relatives will always be the constant fetters in the hearts of wanderers. I can't forget that in the country yard, the whole family sat together, burning incense, eating round moon cakes and sharing beautiful holiday scenes in Yue Bai. Now, how many people are standing on the windowsill of other houses, looking at the unchanging bright moon, counting the quiet and warm years and remembering the wisps of smoke from their hometown.
"The moon has now risen to the sea, illuminating the whole sky." The breeze pushes the clouds, and the moonlight shines on the boundless mountains. The bright moon, which has been rendered with ink for thousands of years, still exudes the fragrance of laurel trees in every rural courtyard and street. Singing the poems of the ancients, listening to the song "Cloud Chasing the Moon" floating from the ancient road, the string sounds stirred a pool of autumn water and comforted the passionate feelings of every wanderer.
People who are far away from home, don't forget the old trees at the entrance of the village, the affectionate eyes of elderly parents, the aging hands of mothers under the flickering lights, and the trembling thoughts drilling into the dense soles, calling for distant children. Mirrors are like moonlight, penetrating the clouds of history. From ancient times to the present, from the countryside to the city, it bathes the ancients and shines on the newcomers, leaving peace and tranquility, reunion and warmth to the world. The moon is full of rain and shine, and people have joys and sorrows. This matter is old and difficult. I hope people can live together for a long time.