Is there a story about cooking porridge in the middle of the night? What does it mean?

Cooking porridge in the middle of the night

Author: Yi Yin

I heard about it when I was very young. Let’s talk about a newly married daughter-in-law who wakes up at three o’clock every day to cook porridge for her mother-in-law who gets up at five o’clock to recite Buddha’s name. The mother-in-law who serves as a Buddha wants to eat sorghum porridge, but she is not allowed to cook it over a high fire for fear of wasting firewood, so she simmers it over a slow fire. After three hours, the sorghum rice, which is as hard as a grain of stone, can be cooked into a bowl of soft porridge, which is placed in a bowl. When the temperature reaches 70-80%, it is brought into the mother-in-law's room. The mother-in-law only took a small taste, which meant that her daily morning meal was over, and that was the end of the bowl of porridge.

When I was young at that time, when I heard this, I quickly asked what would happen in the future: "Then what happened after the mother-in-law finished her porridge? Can the little daughter-in-law go to bed?"

Storyteller It was my grandmother. She was peeling newly planted pods in her hands and said angrily: "Where can I go to sleep? As soon as the sun rises, I have to cook for a large family, feed pigs and sheep, just like cattle and horses, take a breather. There is no chance.”

A mouthful of sorghum porridge, a bowl full of tears of hard work. I was young at the time and could not understand it thoughtfully. When I grew older, I understood the grief and anger my grandmother contained when she told this story, because the little daughter-in-law was her mother.

No one can remember how she survived that period. It was midnight in the countryside of northern Jiangsu, it was cold at night, and the stars in the sky were still having a grand party. Her hair was disheveled and her eyes were sleepy. Squatting in front of the stove, after a burst of smoke, the jumping stove fire and the sound of the porridge boiling in the pot gave her a little warmth and comfort. This is how the days slowly passed. This is what I thought.

One day, when I went back to the countryside to visit my great-grandmother, I asked her a question very abruptly: At that time, I knew I was making things difficult, so why didn’t I resist?

He was over ninety years old, but his smile was very clear. He replied: "It will be fine once the sleepiness is over." After a while, he pursed his lips and smiled, and added: "The night before , your great-grandfather quietly soaked the sorghum rice, chopped the fine wood and put it in front of the stove. I just watched it."

At that moment, her eyes lit up again like she was fourteen years old. The starlight, just a few details of being secretly loved, can overcome all the hardships. When you are old, all the hardships have been wiped out, but the sweetness of the secret is more profound and eternal than remembering.