When I was a child, there was a hillside at home, with only cotton planted. The bedding on the bed and the cotton coats and pants worn by the family all came from the cotton field.
The autumn is clear and the wind is light and the things are quiet. On a blue morning, the clouds are white and the sky are blue, my grandparents and I are hiding in the long cotton field. Snow-white cotton is wrapped in cotton pods and smiling in the wind, waiting for us to pick it up.
The half-yellow cotton pod was slightly exposed, and it was tidely tide. With a light break of your hand, a fat white flower popped out.
A small cloth bag was hung on the front of each of the three of us, which contained the white and soft cotton picked. The cloth bag was full and poured into a large basket, carried by grandpa to the ground, and then poured into the cart with a fence.
The car was full, so my grandfather took it home and sprinkled it in the yard with oil cloth. At night, the white flowers in the yard were blooming, holy and solemn.
Dried cotton flowers must be peeled off one by one to truly become fluffy cotton, make bedding, cotton coats and trousers, and warm our bodies and souls in the biting winter.
The hillside was originally a wasteland, which was cultivated bit by bit by bit when my grandfather was grazing sheep. Large stones, small stones, dead trees and grass roots were dug out, and baskets of loess were brought from a distance and mixed into the sandy land.
The fermented farm fertilizer was pulled out with a cart and applied to the ground, soaking a piece of wild grassy slope into a fertile field little by little.
Sow seeds in spring and harvest in autumn. Year after year, only cotton is planted, not other crops are planted, and the neighbors are lobbying, and grandparents smile slightly and are stubborn. For this reason, they are a stubborn and stubborn.
On a long winter night, my grandmother sat in front of the small spinning wheel , twisting the cotton into threads bit by bit. The spinning wheel squeaked and twisted, and the cotton thread was wrapped around the spinning wheel's wheel's wheel, layer after layer, slowly the roulette became fat and round.
Removed the ball of cotton thread from the roulette, and grandma took it into the next process, loom . Watching the shuttle shuttle shuttle shuttle shuttle back and forth in grandma's hand like a graceful butterfly, the white cloth slowly extends forward...
It took many years like this until the land was requisitioned and a factory was built and a mining plant was started.
My father and uncle were excitedly talking about how many acres of land there were and how much money it could be compensated. They even talked about how to divide it after getting the money, how to use it, whether to buy a house or a car.
Grandpa was silent while smoking a cigarette pipe. Grandma was a little stunned, a little helpless, and a little panicked.
At that time, I was pregnant with a baby and had a strong pregnancy reaction. My grandma took me back to give birth at her parents' home. I looked at my grandma and felt a little puzzled.
Then, that night, grandpa brought his father and uncle with a handful of iron, a big black cloth, and a wooden box with mottled painted by grandma.
Before leaving, grandma pulled out a piece of mattress from the bed where she was sleeping and spread it in the box, spread it flat.
I asked curiously what to do. Grandma's eyes were red, she stroked my big belly with her rough hands, and said softly, "Your four uncles and aunts who died early are buried in that piece of land."
grandmother gave birth to 7 children, and only her father, uncle and aunt survived.
Two children died at the moment of birth. One of them was extremely smart and looked good. At the age of three, he had a high fever for two days. The village doctor used various methods to reduce the fever but failed. He was sent to the hospital and found out that it was meningitis. He had convulsed for a day and a night, but it was gone.
Another 8 months old, my grandmother went to the field to work and left him to crawl around. During the busy farming season, the adults were busy and had no energy to take care of the child at all times. When I took him home at night, I found that the child's arms were purple-black. The village doctor saw it and said it was bitten by the poisonous snake. It was too late and it was no longer saved.
According to our local customs, children die prematurely and are not allowed to enter the ancestral grave. They just find a straw mat and poke it into the mountains and dig a small pit to bury it. It is common for hungry birds and beasts to eat it.
Every time my grandfather carried his child up the mountain, he cried so hard that his back and nose dripped onto the upper without caring about wiping it.
The heart of parents is lost again and again, lost, and lost, sadness becomes a river, broken into pieces of ice.
That day, grandpa and father and uncle didn't come back until the middle of the night, and grandma didn't sleep. She waited. In her spare time, she put the dough in a large porcelain basin, rolled it into big dough, and then cut it into narrow noodles.
Hand-rolled noodles with chopped green onion are my favorite. They are busy and tired in the mud and water, and they can't stand straight. Just take a bowl of hand-rolled noodles with chopped green onion green onion green onion green onion green onion green onion, vegetables and sesame oil, and suck it through their throat, slide into their stomachs, and immediately relieve fatigue.
Uncle said that before the bottom of the box was covered, the mat had already rotted, there was not even a piece of cloth on his body, and he buried it naked?
Grandma could no longer hold it back and covered her mouth and cried. Grandpa said that at that time, I could only care about living people. I took off all my clothes and left them for you brothers to wear, so I didn’t care about them anymore.
After my child was born, my grandmother used the cotton that was finally produced by the land, wearing reading glasses, leaning against the quilt, and made her a small quilt and two sets of small cotton coats and cotton pants.
I still remember that she was sitting cross-legged on the bed, twisting the white silk thread in her mouth, passing the thread through the needle nose against the fine sunlight, and then evenly sewing the light cotton wool into the cotton cloth, line by line, connecting the lines by the nest, the golden sunlight sprinkled on her body, like a layer of gold powder, shining.
grandma fell asleep in her sleep, walked peacefully, and there was a smile on her lips. Because of the epidemic, the funeral was extremely simple, and it was buried in a hurry the next day. Before I could react, I had no time to be sad. I subconsciously felt that my grandma just fell asleep and woke up the next day, so she left forever.
Grandpa also left quietly less than three months after grandma went there. A bunch of relatives with long filial cloth knelt in front of his spirit, crying loudly. My heart hurt so much that my chest was hunched over, I couldn't stand up, my nose was swollen and difficult to breathe, my mouth and throat were so dry that I could not speak a word.
With the death of grandparents, the traces of their life on this land faded day by day. All the efforts, sorrow, expectation, humility, strength, tolerance, pain when they were alive, as well as the warmth and comfort of their relatives, the joy of family with their children and grandchildren, and the struggles and conflicts with their relatives and neighbors were all dissipated in the quiet clouds and winds, completely separated from the world, and their life was successfully concluded.
From then on, dust returns to dust, earth returns to earth, for the meeting in the next life, and then cultivate the relationship between the world.
That day, my mother took off and washed a small quilt, and the wool on the balcony was covered with cotton wool. In front of her eyes, she felt like a thunderclap in my mind, and suddenly I realized that the field with only cotton planting hidden another layer of thoughts of my grandparents. That thought was called "memorial service".
The sorrow for the children who died early, the guilt of not being able to raise them, the commemoration for the Qingming Festival, and the longing that can only be buried in the heart, all sacrifice to the children who have been separated from the yin and yang and buried in the dark soil through the white clarity of blooming cotton.
Author profile: Chen Suqin, female, born in the 1970s, was born in Wugang City, Henan Province, with the pen name Yichen. I like to read some books, like to write, write with essays, express my feelings, and use words to express the deepest romance in my heart! Even though he is middle-aged, he still longs for poetry and distant places.
Editor: Wu Qiaojing Proofreader: Xie Chunyan
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