Three-inch golden lotus leaf life-dedicated to my little grandmother

Grandpa didn't want her feet before he married her.

At that time, Shandong girls paid attention to "looking at their faces, feet and dowry." Grandma's face is beautiful, but the key is her small feet. At that time, the three-inch golden lotus was better than the face, and it was difficult for a girl with big feet to find her husband's family. Grandma's little feet were beautiful when she got married. The feet less than 3 inches are wrapped in delicate red embroidered shoes wrapped in blue cloth, and the shoes are half an inch blue. The little foot that got off the sedan chair walked forward with small steps, and the trembling steps set off the graceful posture, which made people expect a lot less from the face under the red veil, but they were crying for this little foot.

The married life of a woman with little feet

But these little feet brought her not only the envious eyes of others, but also countless hardships and physical pains.

Grandpa is a famous carpenter in Shiliba Village. After he married grandma with little feet, he became more beautiful. When he is not doing carpentry, he hangs a bag of dry cigarettes to the village head and chats with people. At that time, agriculture was still a production team, and the farm work in the team naturally fell on my little grandmother. Grandpa never felt bad about grandma's little feet weeding and plowing. If one day grandma's cooking is salty or weak, grandpa will overturn the table without saying a word. The weak grandmother didn't know how to control her own destiny, let alone defend her dignity. She didn't even have time to dry her tears, so she rushed to cook for her grandfather.

Grandma's daily life is like this: get up at dawn to make breakfast. When everyone was eating breakfast, she fed the chickens and pigs, and when she cleaned up the dishes, she grabbed a few bites. Because in addition to working in the production team, she has to climb a mountain from the village to another mountain village every three days to change bedding and wash clothes for her semi-paralyzed menstruation. It doesn't hurt to be a little tired. The point is that my period is really grumpy. When she starts to get sick, she will throw things at her grandmother. She twisted her grandmother when she approached her. Grandma's body is often black and blue, and the injuries on her body and arms never stop. Grandma can't tell whether grandpa lifted the table or aunt twisted it. The winding mountain road has printed countless grandma's little footprints. No matter spring, summer, autumn and winter, wind, frost, rain and snow never stop. This care is seven years, and it is not easy for grandma to die until her period. However, since my aunt died, my grandmother often went to the mountains to see my aunt's village for a long time. Although she kept silent all the time, her family knew that she had missed her grumpy period.

Although grandma is thin and has three inches of feet, her actions have always been a mystery to me: she can easily pull dozens of kilograms of wheat brought back by her father into the sun and stand up one by one. She can gently carry a bag of sweet potatoes on her shoulders and put them in the house, sweeping the floor, collecting dregs, cooking and washing clothes ... She will always turn like a top and have no complaints like a scalper.

A woman with little feet and a spinning wheel

My little grandmother not only supports the elderly and takes care of the children, but also squeaks and pulls the spinning wheel. Winter in the countryside is cold and depressing. For women who have been busy for half a year, it is just a day to rest. Take a handful of melon seeds and move them to the bench in groups of three or five, or pick up your hands folded in the cuffs of cotton-padded jackets and stand against the wall in the sun to talk about your parents' shortcomings.

Let them shout every day, grandma never attends their parties. She just sits on a stone and makes shoes on a sunny day. Most importantly, she wants to bounce cotton into cotton wadding, and then make them into cotton strips with a length of 30 cm and a diameter of 2 cm. Cotton sticks piled up into hills. This is the work of grandma with winter feet. Cook three meals a day, wash dishes and brush chopsticks, feed chickens and pigs, and grandma will sit in front of the spinning wheel in the rest of winter.

Especially at night, when we were all asleep, grandma lit the horseshoe lamp, turned the spinning wheel in her right hand and held the cotton sliver in her left hand. The spinning wheel in my hand hummed rhythmically, and the old cat by the fire purred evenly, interwoven into a lullaby, gradually pulling the young me into the warm and sweet world of the old cat.

When next spring comes, grandma and mom will twist the spun cotton ear sticks into a zigzag shape with wooden shafts, dye them, stick them in groups, dry them in the sun, wind them around the spools, and finally turn them into shuttle threads in mom's hands.

When this batch of shuttle lines was completed, grandma began to accumulate for the next batch. The years alternated and grandma never had a rest day. While doing this, she often said to herself: When grandma was young, she should spin more cotton for my granddaughter and make more coarse cloth for her, so that the dowry will be full of boxes when she gets married in the future.

I don't think grandma felt bitter or tired because she had hope in her heart.

Feet women and food

Grandma is busier during the wheat harvest. During the day, she will boil water for the whole family to cook. At noon, when everyone is resting, she will carry her own basket made of corn stalks and pick up wheat ears in the vicious sun. At that time, after the harvest, every family carefully picked up the missed ears again. When grandma went back, she couldn't see a few ears of wheat at all. Grandma is often busy for a noon, carrying an empty basket filled with coarse clothes, shivering, and grandpa is scolded when he sees it. Grandma has no excuse, but she hasn't changed the habit of picking wheat ears every day.

In autumn, she will hop around with little feet and carry a basket to pick up corn, sweet potatoes, soybeans and peanuts. Every year, she dries the food she picks up, peels it off with a wooden hammer, cooks soup with wheat, bakes corn and sweet potatoes for us, cooks soybeans and peanuts with salt, and makes a snack for grandpa.

When I grew up, I made similar soups and vegetables, and I also ate many big meals and farmhouses in star-rated hotels, but none of them were as delicious as grandma's wheat kernel soup or grandma's sauerkraut.

On midsummer nights, grandma often goes to Yang Shulin with lanterns to touch forks for my brother and me (we call them golden cicadas), especially in Yang Shulin after the rain. Grandma stumbled in the Woods, and it was difficult to touch so many forks. Soak it in salt water for a few days, and serve it with a single cake with hazelnuts baked by her (an antique tin thing for making a single cake). The fresh meat is fried brown and crisp, and the fragrant juice is wrapped around it, which is brighter and brighter in the sun, wrapped in a single cake, and the fragrant fragrance bursts in, making the world delicious.

Grandma with little feet in the eyes of the younger generation

Every time I see grandma pulling off the foot wrap and holding her feet, it is particularly uncomfortable. Those feet with four broken toes are tapered like the length of a small palm, and the small heels and broken fingers are covered with cocoons; The roads in the mountain village are uneven. When I met a muddy puddle or something, I fell down after shaking around a few times, and my heart ached.

On sunny days, grandma always sits at the door, unbuttoning the foot wrap layer by layer, putting on reading glasses and poking the cocoon on her feet with a needle. If I happen to meet this scene, I will help grandma pick cocoons together. Of course, until now my grandmother is willing to tell me the story of her foot binding.

Grandma was pestered by her mother when she was five years old. In addition to the big toe, the four little toes are forced to press under the footboard, and then wrapped around the four toes with a blue cloth ten feet long and two and a half inches to three and a half inches wide, passing through the instep and heel, and then to the instep and heel. In order to prevent grandma from secretly letting go of her feet, grandma sewed the bound feet with needle and thread.

Just wrapped, grandma cried in pain, and couldn't go to the ground for several days in a row, crying while walking against the wall. After liberation, you can finally let go of your feet, but because of years of foot binding, your feet have long been deformed and stereotyped.

Every time I help my grandmother untie the foot-binding cloth, my eyes will be moist: the foot-binding cloth is opened layer by layer, the big toe is in front, as sharp as a lotus petal, and the other toes are covered on the soles of the feet one after another, deformed and even "integrated", the instep is raised high, the soles of the feet are almost invisible, and the unique heel is the largest, which is transformed into the "pillar" of the whole foot-this is the "three-inch golden lotus" repeatedly praised by feudal society. No, in my opinion, those feet are less than three inches long. My thumb is also wronged, and I carefully don't stand up straight, for fear that once I stand up straight, other sisters will also hurt.

Young I still don't understand the inevitable connection between foot binding and marriage. When grandma nagged me about these words, her tone was as dull as talking about an irrelevant person, and a smile floated on her face, as if telling a distant and unforgettable story.

But time is ruthless. Maybe God knew the hardships of this little woman's life, so when she was 86 years old, she took her grandmother away painlessly. Since then, I have never eaten fried forks and baked single cakes. I ran to grandma's old house and saw the cobwebs on the lonely spinning wheel. I think the spinning wheel misses its owner as much as I do!

I couldn't bear to see grandma's little feet before, but now I can't see them if I want to.

The Sophora japonica in front of the old house in my hometown bloomed and thanked, but I could no longer see grandma's trembling and emaciated body. She leaned against the wall and shouted my name until I left for a long time. ...

pass

Sacrifice with a handful of loess

miss

Heartache with dreamy memories

From the Republic of China to modern times

It's gone. Long braid

The robe and jacket are gone.

But those feet didn't grow up at all

Trembling walk

Trembling support

Such as the Republic of China

Just not in the Republic of China.

You, but stay.

These little feet

Can't go far

Can't reach the end of the world

However, your children have grown up.

Originally, a solitary tree with shallow roots.

Now, it has become a green ocean.

Now, you are old.

Is it, is it my distance?

There is a desert.

Return from a thousand miles

I can only cry helplessly at the new grave.

How to let go

Stop; see you again

Wave a hand

Swing until the end of the day