Great-grandmother (prose)

On the weekend, I went to Wuyi in the north of lead mountain. My mother, my little aunt and my cousin were also there. I talked to them about the past and mentioned my great-grandmother. What I say most is that she is still in her eighties. Grandma is a good actress. Her children and grandchildren and later the fourth generation all wear bibs and shoes sewn by her, and her own embroidered shoes with small feet also come from her dexterous hands. Sometimes when I meet my neighbor's wedding, my grandmother will help me cut some window grilles, pull up the list and write the red happy word. The villagers nearby regard her as an ancestor and respect her more.

The words of my mother and aunts opened the floodgate of my memory, and the past suddenly emerged from my subconscious, and everything was clear.

When I was young, I lived in the countryside and never went to kindergarten. I spent my childhood in socks. My childhood was divided into two parts. Before I was 5 years old, I lived in a big family with four generations living under one roof, and then I grew up with my uncle in Wang's parents.

When I was born, my grandmother was in her early eighties and my three sons had a third generation. A large family, except my grandfather's second son, works in the county, and everyone else lives with her old man in Wangcun, Bangluo Township. I don't know much about my family background, and adults are also secretive about their family background. After decades of turmoil, grandfathers died in the rush of livelihood, and their ancestral home became a mysterious existence. So far, I only know that our ancestral home is in Jingde, Anhui Province, and our great-grandfather began to settle in Lead Mountain, Jiangxi Province for the sake of brewing. The ancestral house built at the time of settlement has a square hall of tens of square meters, and there are two rooms on the east and west sides of the hall. The old grandmother lives in the east wing.

Three sons are getting married, and the original house is obviously not enough. As a result, houses were built on both sides of the ancestral home, but two rows of opposite houses were built in the east, with an alley of more than ten meters in the middle; However, in the west, a row of houses are built from north to south. The pattern of added houses is basically the same: one room and one kitchen. My grandfather's second child lives in two rows of houses built in the east, my grandparents live in the south, my parents take us to live in the north, and our four brothers and sisters were born in the only room in the north. Grandpa three lives in the row of houses built in the west. I don't know why, grandpa's family lives in Kangjiayuan, one mile away from his ancestral home. I don't know whether the house grandpa lives in is his own or rented. As far as I can remember, the semi-rammed house was so shabby that it couldn't even shelter from the wind and rain in the later period. It is indescribable bitterness to watch grandpa huddle up in a mass of broken cotton wool in winter. Grandpa's family has many children. When the children get married, the new house will be located in several other houses in the ancestral home except grandma's. Several new people came in one after another, and soon children were added. Grandma's endless happiness is written on her face, and her love for new people and newborns is conveyed in red envelopes already prepared.

The three sons have separated, and the grandmother still has the dignity of a parent. Every time my grandfather comes home from the county seat, he always goes to the old woman's house to pay his respects. Grandpa has a bad temper and always finds fault with grandma. Maybe it's my widowed mother's discipline habit, or it's not easy to understand my mother's hardships. Grandpa is extremely filial to his mother, and he is always passive to Nuo Nuo in front of Nuo Nuo's old man.

Grandma is tall and has a pair of small feet, which makes it difficult to move. Usually, she always sits in her small room. When there are many family members or guests, grandma will also sit in the hall. There is a long incense table in the hall, with an incense burner in the middle, a mirror and a vase on the left and right. At both ends of the incense table, a master chair was placed respectively. The one in the east, not far from grandma's room, is a special seat for grandma when she is present. Grandpa can sit without grandma, and other wives and children generally don't sit on that stool. We occasionally snuggle up to our elders' chests and feel a different kind of respect. Sometimes we indulge ourselves and get carried away, but this is not too much.

Perhaps it is because the adoption of a son has exhausted the strictness of the grandmother, who is particularly kind to her grandchildren, especially her great-grandchildren. Her face is very thin, and her white hair is tied in a bun at the back of her head, which is not messy at all; A suit of coarse clothes is washed clean and spotless; A pair of gentle eyes are always full of love and smile at us.

At that time, I was still young, and I didn't know much about the hardships and difficulties of the "three-inch golden lotus". I am only interested in grandma's little feet, which I always find when she washes her feet. Granny enjoys it and always lets me play around and take a closer look. When I was a child, my grandmother's feet were about the size of my hands. My five toes are crowded together, and my thumb is very big. The other four fingers are close together on my thumb, which is a little short. Now that I think about it, it's like a chicken hiding under its mother's wings, but holding its head high to feed its mother, as if you can still hear a group of chickens chirping because of noisy disputes. Grandma's arch is completely broken, and she has long lost the elasticity of stretching, so that the heel and sole stick together, forming a raised big bag on the instep. Good feet were destroyed and lost their prototype, which must contain the memory of blood and tears of grandma's childhood.

Grandma is tall and thin, and every time she tries to grow straight, she always gives people a sense of symmetry. However, the "three-inch golden lotus" is top-heavy and inconvenient to move. Every time she gets up, she puts her hands on the armrest of her master's chair. After standing still, she walked around on crutches or tables or bed bars. Every time I see her trembling, I am worried that she will fall. Sometimes I reach out and help her cleverly, and grandma will touch my little head with her hand, and her eyes are full of praise. This kind of praise for facts is a kind of expectation, which is imperceptible in the process of my growth. It seems that all my concepts of right and wrong are stereotyped in her words and deeds and become the source of my life. I wonder how orphans and widows survived when the country was in turmoil. All three grandfathers have been to school, and they are all beginners. My grandfather can use an abacus and is an accounting expert. Grandpa San was an old high school student before liberation. Although he suffered a lot in sports, he still has endless energy to set things right after returning to work. The so-called "an old horse crouching tiger, aiming at a thousand miles" has been well reflected in Third Master.

Grandma is inconvenient to move, and three meals a day are sent to her room by her children and grandchildren. Life was hard at that time, and only grandma's dinner bowl had a rare animal flavor. After every meal, the first great-grandson who walks into her room often has a few thin pieces of meat to cook a rare meal. Now that I think about it, it must be my grandmother's intention. There won't be so many coincidences.

Another point, impressive, is also related to eating. A group of children, sometimes in twos and threes, sometimes alone, go to grandma's room to play. She often takes out rock sugar from the glass bottle to satisfy our desire. Rock candy was called yukiko candy. Maybe as clear as yukiko. ! At that time, rock candy was a rarity, but it was never broken in grandma's room. Great-grandchildren, distributing rock candy, grandma seems to be careless, but she is keeping a balance with her shrewdness. Some of them can be used. One is my eldest brother, who is the fourth-generation grandson of Wang. When he was a child, he was particularly smart and lovely, and he was very likable. The other is me after I was five years old. When I was 5 years old, I left my grandmother and lived in Wanger with my uncle. It is not easy to go back to my hometown by bus, boat and foot. But every time I go back to my hometown and run into my grandmother's cabin, she will take out a large piece of rock sugar to comfort me. I licked the crystal sugar handed me by my grandmother with my tongue, then kept sucking it, and finally put it all in my mouth and snapped it for a while. Slowly melting sweetness has always been in my heart, which is meaningful.

Grandma must have suffered unimaginable hardships when she lost her husband in her early years and settled down to support her family. Although her brother and other family members help, it always itches. Grandma can bear hardships for her three sons, and there must be something extraordinary, which is inseparable from her spirit of tolerance, kindness and hard work. Along the way, grandma raised and protected the blood of the king with good words and deeds. Her good words and deeds, like her blood, flow on us and play a more active role.

1976 at the beginning, my grandmother died peacefully at the age of 90. (Editor in charge: Deputy Editor-in-Chief)