Although I go to work as usual every day, the thick festive atmosphere still brings people back to those summer vacations.

The dawn of summer vacation in the 1990s.

Hot and humid inland plain in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

Every day, dawn brings signs of dryness. Standing at the door in the morning, let the rare breeze blow away the sweat and sleepiness of the previous night and welcome the arrival of a new day. The breeze is warm, too. After being touched by it, go back and pat your face with cold water.

Mother is cooking breakfast as usual. Sometimes it's fried rice with eggs, and sometimes it's noodles or porridge and pickles. At that time, there was no refrigerator at home, and the leftovers were packed in small barrel-shaped containers, inverted with plates and put in water to calm down. Porridge is not the best when it is just cooked. It's best to wait until lunch and dinner are cold. After eating a bowl of rice and a bowl of cold porridge, it is as refreshing as dessert.

Entertainment is the TV series "The Legend of the New White Snake" and The Journey to the West dedicated to the summer vacation. I have never caught up with the luck of the first episode. It has been many years since I bought my first computer and watched the story of the first episode of The Legend of the White Snake on the Internet.

afternoon

Time always flies in the morning. Do summer homework, watch two episodes of TV, and it will be noon.

After breakfast, my mother is preparing lunch. Buy vegetables, wash vegetables, cut vegetables and side dishes. She always washes every green leaf, onion, ginger and garlic carefully. Sometimes I will move a small stool to sit next to her and help her remove the yellow leaves and roots of vegetables.

As far as I can remember, the recipes for summer vacation include shredded green pepper, shredded white eggplant and red amaranth (in the past, our hometown only had red amaranth). I didn't know there was white amaranth until I arrived in the south. Pour the amaranth soup into the porridge, which is purplish red and eaten upside down.

Then I touched my bulging belly contentedly and went to take a nap. Of course, there is no air conditioning. The floor fan swung back and forth, and I rolled on the bamboo bed, listening to the cicadas chirping in the glistening sunshine outside, and slowly fell asleep.

Summer afternoons are really suitable for sleeping. Consciousness is still in a daze, and all kinds of dreams jump back and forth in my mind, making people unable to distinguish reality from reality. Finally, I got up the courage to lift my heavy eyelids, and my head was still stuffy. I sat up and wiped a sweat, blowing away the fatigue of the muscles in front of the fan, sitting idly, remembering the feeling of time passing in my sleep.

Moved out all the textbooks at home and read the story again and again. Look at the composition book my mother bought. Solve more summer homework problems that you can't do. Usually, I concentrate on doing most of the work a few days ago, leaving problems and compositions to solve slowly.

It's almost to the west of the sun.

Neighbors and friends came to say hello and went out to play. Running on the grass of the nearby school playground, pulling weeds, pulling wrists, and hanging gold hooks upside down on the parallel bars … until the sun sinks like an egg yolk and loses its harsh light, leaving a rosy glow all over the sky. It was not until the voices of adults calling their children home for dinner were drowned out that the little friends went home one by one. I walked barefoot on the not-so-hot road, carrying sandals to the faucet of the opposite grain station to wash my feet.

The end of the day.

Tired of playing, there is food on the table. I remember eating jelly melon once (the pulp is full of vermicelli), which is crisp and delicious, and I haven't seen it since. I think it must still exist somewhere, waiting for us to meet again at some time and place.

Ordinary three meals a day

When I was a child, I didn't understand why adults seldom laughed. Mom asks you what you want to eat today every day. Mom doesn't buy food, cook in the kitchen, or wash dishes and clean the table. Get up early to make breakfast, and then prepare lunch after work. In the afternoon, you should consider what to eat for dinner.

People are busy eating three meals a day.

Feed two or even three children well; For the tuition of the new semester after the summer vacation; For the invisible future, it will become different because of the growth of children; For the faint hope in my heart.

Just like now, I have to cook three meals a day for my children every weekend. Being busy for a few hours every day reminds me of those summer vacation days when I was a child and ate my mother's cooking. What kind of power makes mom want to be whipped day after day and year after year? This power will be passed down from generation to generation and will be passed on to our next generation. One day, they will learn the courage to live in this fireworks.