I took Duoduo to the supermarket on the weekend. After driving for a while, she fell asleep. When she woke up, the first thing she asked me was, Dad, are we still going to buy mooncakes? It wasn't until she heard me saying that I had bought it that she blinked her big eyes, couldn't help but let out an ooh, and then continued to look out the window happily.
For me now, there is only one memory about the Mid-Autumn Festival in my childhood: the moon is too big and too round!
In my childhood, I only waited for two festival nights, one to stay up late on New Year’s Eve, and the other to celebrate the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Every New Year's Eve, children play all day, immersed in the festive atmosphere and cannot be quiet for a while, looking forward to the new clothes and new year's money the next morning. In sleepy and tired conditions, they insist on waiting for the bell to ring on the TV and grow a new year. Years of waiting. On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, looking at a table of moon cakes and fruits, waiting for the delicious food after the sacrifice, I always ask my parents when the sacrifice will be finished and when it will be ready to eat. Often, I have not waited for the good luck to start. Already fell asleep in a dream.
In my memory, the Mid-Autumn Festival in my childhood seems to be more grand. This kind of grandness is different from the current superficial festival atmosphere, but more about the real existence of this festival in everyone's heart.
After finally getting through school, I trotted all the way home, threw down my schoolbag, and saw that my parents, who were busy at work, had not come back yet. Then I went out to roll hoops in the lane with my friends, and went fishing in the waterlogged pond. Then I saw my parents pulling a cart from a distance, carrying weeds and shovels on their backs. When they came back, they ran home quickly, picked up their homework books, and wrote hard. . Then I saw my parents washing their hands and drinking tea, feeding grain to the chickens, and feeding the piglets. Then my father sat in the yard and smoked without saying a word. My mother was washing vegetables and cooking in the kitchen, making clinking sounds, while I was writing in the room. While doing homework, I secretly looked out the window from time to time, smelling the aroma of the food. The writing on the homework book became more scrawled, and I became more anxious.
For children, in addition to fun things, only delicious things can make them stop crying and playing, and seriously devote themselves to a new kind of attention. Regarding the taste of childhood, the smell of Mid-Autumn Festival is even stronger.
Unlike today’s ice cream mooncakes and golden mooncakes, the mooncakes in my childhood were all made at home. There are steamed and baked, big and small. From the flour and eggs used to make mooncakes to the firewood and coal used to bake mooncakes, they are all produced in-house. Sometimes neighbors use an oven together, and then light a fire, and the housewives start to work. You knead the dough, she shapes it, she cooks it, she takes it out, in an orderly manner and with proper cooperation. . The men took turns carrying the oven, busy oiling and cooking, and smoking cigarettes and talking and laughing from time to time. The children were making paper treasures and folding airplanes in the yard, listening to the sound of freshly baked mooncakes coming in, chirping like a bunch of little sparrows.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, make moon cakes. Red date cake, mung bean paste, and a red plum blossom in the middle. Watermelon lantern, empty in the middle, candlelight and moonlight blend together. It's late at night, and when I look up, I see moon cakes, melons and fruits offering to the moon.
After making moon cakes, eating, and waiting for the moon to rise on the branches, we began to offer the moon. My father even used his excellent knife skills to carve a watermelon lantern on a large, round watermelon, cut out petals from large and small apples and pears, and then garnished the plate with grapes, autumn dates, Golden and red fruits and other small objects seemed to be dedicated to the moon to hold a grand peach conference. The children looked at the fruits, the fun watermelon lanterns, and the moon outside the window, feeling that it was so round, so big, and so close.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival when I was a child, I felt more of a sense of belonging. Although relatives and neighbors were not good at expressing emotions, they often sat in the yard together on this specific day, chatting, and admiring the moon, a kind of Very quiet feeling. I am always looking at the big and round moon, trying to see Chang'e, Jade Rabbit and their Guanghan Palace in the story.
Until I arrived in Shanghai and ate egg yolk and lotus paste mooncakes, fresh meat mooncakes and ice cream mooncakes, I ended my understanding that mooncakes were only sweet and floury. Whenever I accompany my children for a walk in the community at night and listen to the children saying "Dad, Daddy, the moon teeth are coming out," I always wonder why this moon is so small and so far away. It is far different from the moon in my childhood. Think about it again, there are the local accents, neighbors who have gone away together, and the innocent friends we used to be with.
No matter how delicious the mooncakes are, they still don’t have the same feeling as they did back then. Time always goes by in a hurry. When I was a child, my mother said that if I pointed at the moon, my ears would be cut off, and I would lie on the haystack with my friends and look at the round and big moon, silent and scared, but also extremely happy. I just remember that the sky was blue, the moon was round and big, there were many stars, and the wind was cool.
I believe that in the future, we will also miss us now.
I hope that friends and partners who have been together can still enjoy this bright moon, remember the beauty of the past, and face the future life healthily and happily!