Text/Taibai’s Watermelon It’s the Spring Festival again. People around me are grabbing train tickets to go home and preparing various New Year’s goods. They are sighing: “The New Year is getting more and more meaningless. I was so happy during the New Year when I was a kid.” But

Is it really the rich material life that makes the taste of the New Year become weaker and weaker?

In my opinion, not necessarily so.

We miss the taste of our childhood. What we miss is just the carefree childhood when we were ignorant of the world.

The happy and joyful years in my memory are the happiness and happiness of laughing amidst the sound of firecrackers: the prank of picking up and throwing firecrackers around the village with a group of friends; helping my father put up Spring Festival couplets, but being covered in paste

, the little naughty kid who was laughed at and scolded by my mother; the little pride that made us pick up chicken feathers all over the floor after grandma killed the chicken, and compare with our friends whose feather shuttlecock was more beautiful; the little pride that made us secretly get the fish maws to make toys after our mother killed the fish, and compare them everywhere

It’s the stupidity of stepping around with your little feet; it’s the joy of crawling in and out of the crowd with your brothers and sisters when friends and relatives get together; it’s the croquettes and fried fish that are just out of the pan, which you’ve been looking forward to for a long time.

, a variety of hot and super delicious New Year snacks; it’s the mischief we make while tidying up our mother while we are cleaning up the whole family; it’s the happiness and reunion of a family neatly dressed in the most beautiful clothes and going to the photo studio; it’s

The VIP treatment we enjoy when visiting relatives with adults is the new clothes that our aunt always gives us every year; it’s our playful “following” every time our parents go to the market to prepare New Year’s goods; it’s the candied haws that we drooled over for a long time at the market; it’s the

When killing the New Year pig once a year, it is a little funny thing to cover your ears and stick your little head out from among the adults to peek at the bloody scene; it is the whole village in the cold wind of winter night, gathering in the field at the head of the village to watch the outdoors

It is the joy of movies and circus performances; it is the solemnity and dignity when the whole family pays homage to their ancestors, it is the awe of the Kitchen God with the first bowl of dumplings and the hope for a better life; it is the peace and harmony in the couplets of "going out to see happiness" and "going out and leaving safely"

Blessing; it’s the sip of white wine secretly stolen from my father’s wine glass at the New Year’s Eve dinner; it’s the joy and satisfaction of seeing the red envelope when I kowtow to my grandparents in the morning of the first day of the Lunar New Year.

It’s the night of New Year’s Eve, when the family huddles under a quilt, eating melon seeds and watching the warmth of the Spring Festival Gala; it’s the early hours of the morning, when they get out of the warm bed and set off the first firecrackers of the New Year in beautiful anticipation.

; It is also a small rule that you must eat "vegetarian dumplings" as the first meal of the New Year, and make sure not to eat meat to avoid "drowsiness". It is also a "little superstition" that you don't sweep the floor on the first day of the new year for fear of sweeping away the blessings of the New Year.

These memories are all about pure laughter, carefree eating and drinking, and pure and happy expectations for the "New Year".

But when I was a child, I was a bit precocious. Behind this happiness, I was a little afraid of the New Year.

At that time, my father was still the captain of the production team. The team always owed money from supply and marketing cooperatives, agricultural machinery cooperatives, grain stations and other departments, ranging from fertilizers to tractors on credit, to grain seeds, and the cost of digging wells in the field; every year at the end of the year, there was a reminder

All came home.

Even though it was not owed by my family, I always felt a sense of shame and was too embarrassed to go to my friend's house, so I had no choice but to close the door and hide in the room rudely; or I would go to the wild fields and stay bored.

At that time, I was always unhappy with my father's work, and I was often aggressive with him. I always felt that he was not doing anything thankless. Every time during the Spring Festival, debt collectors would come to the house and quarrel several times because of this.

In my memory, my mother is always busy in the kitchen.

As the daughter-in-law of a large family, my mother took on all the work in the kitchen.

Starting from the 20th day of the twelfth lunar month, lard is made (boiled), fried meatballs, fried leaves and other snacks, as well as steamed buns and steamed buns; not to mention the continuous visits of guests, a decent and high-end banquet is prepared.

After the guests left, the table was left in a mess, making it even more difficult to clean up.

In my memory, my mother was always the last one to serve the New Year's Eve dinner, and she had to keep an eye on the kitchen stove during the meal.

By that time, the hot dishes had already cooled down. After finishing the meal in a hurry, we still had to clean up the restaurant and kitchen, and then prepare the dough and make dumplings.

A New Year's Eve dinner is the last day of the year that my mother keeps busy from morning to night. It is the "delicious food" in our mouths and the leftovers in mother's bowl.

Since I started doing housework, I helped my mother in the kitchen.

But every winter, she doesn't want me to get cold water. All I can do is help her light the fire.

So, to this day, I always feel that the water in the kitchen is much cooler than when I was a child, but my mother at that time blocked all the cold air for me.