When you go back to your hometown to worship your ancestors on Qingming Festival, wander in the ocean of golden rapeseed flowers, enjoy the fun of bees flying and butterflies, feel the joy of wheat seedlings growing wildly, listen to the joy of gurgling water, and watch the desire of return birds hovering in the air. This early spring scenery full of vitality is refreshing and pleasant. As dusk falls, the sunset melts gold, bringing the distant villages a piece of golden color. There are several farmers in the distance who are leveling the seedling fields. This scene is an inexplicable touch. I used the camera to freeze this wonderful scenery in the world. Suddenly I felt that the scenery seemed to be missing something. It turned out that the most lively scenery in the evening - smoke from cooking. Yes, where did the wisps of smoke from memory go?
There were faint sad wisps of smoke from cooking, rising from my memory again...
When I was a child, when I was working in the fields during the winter and summer vacations, my eyes were always staring at the smoke from the village, looking for the smoke from our cooking family. My father said that our chimney had not smoked yet. At that time, there were more than a dozen people in our family. The eldest and second brothers had not separated for many years. The cooking pot was very large, and my mother was relatively slow. When someone else was cooking, my mother had just washed her clothes and had not yet brought the vegetables home. After a while, our chimney finally started to smoke. So we work more vigorously, warmth arises naturally, and hope rises from the rising smoke of cooking. The smoke from cooking is thick and light. The first wisp of smoke rising every day in our village must be from Uncle Wang’s house. The smoke in his house is grayish-white, delicate and smooth, like gray-white silk. The firewood for cooking in my house is straw, the smoke is thick and black, and the flame is very small. My mother always blows fire with her mouth to the stove, and the smoke from the stove rises straight from the bottom of the pot, making my mother cry flow out. My father saw it and ran out, shoveled some dry cow dung from the wall and put it into the stove. My mother slowly fanned it with a fan. The flames gradually reflected the bottom of the pot and the dark face of my mother. A faint blue smoke floated out of my chimney.
Later I went to school in another place, and sometimes I came back once every two weeks. When I saw the village, I was looking for the smoke from my home. When I came to the entrance of the village, I often saw the old man Zhang of the Five Guarantee sitting on a bamboo chair and twisting a straw rope. When I saw me, I always said, "I'm done after school, and your chimney is smoking. Your mother will definitely make delicious food for you." The authentic dialect is so friendly. When I arrived at the door of my house, the puppy roared around my legs and entered the house with me. My mother always looked at me up and down, like watching a stranger. Sometimes my father split some tree stumps into pieces and asked my mother to cook, and the room was filled with a strong aroma of food.
Since my father passed away that year, every time I go home, I find that my mother has cooked the rice and then slowly kept it warm on low heat, so the smoke in our cooking room is not too strong. Widgets of smoke in the stove stayed and wrapped around for a long time and rose in the chimney. In the distance, I could still identify the smoke from my house. I knew that my mother would definitely stand at the door waiting for me to go home.
In the flying smoke, my mother's hair also turned white. My mother's smoke was still like a piece of gray silk, flying freely over the village, becoming a beautiful scenery in the countryside.
After graduating from college, I settled in the city. My mother was older. I asked my mother to live with us. My mother insisted that she was not used to it in the city. We bought liquefied gas for my mother. My mother bid farewell to the era of straw rice cooking, but every time I went home, my mother would cook with dry firewood, saying that firewood rice and were fragrant. I guess she would think of her father when she burned dry firewood. My mother also said that basically the villagers no longer burn firewood, burn the cans and liquefied gas, and the newly built houses have no chimneys. Uncle Zhang has passed away, and Uncle Wang, who raised the first wisp of smoke from cooking, has moved to the city. The smoke from cooking stoves gradually faded out of people's sight. However, for us, the scenery of "the distant village, the smoke in the ruins" written by Tao Qian is still a endless longing, a touch of unresolved nostalgia in the memory, which makes people feel infinite nostalgia in the golden years.
One afternoon in December 2016, my mother left without warning, looking at the empty stove, staring at the cold bamboo chair behind the stove, everything was so familiar and so strange. I felt that my mother put her head under the pot and blew it in front of the firewood as usual, and the room seemed to be filled with warm smoke. However, the smoke from my mother's cooking was gradually drifting away and disappeared into the vast sky. "Seeing smoke rising again, flying into my dream." Suddenly, the ringtone of the cell phone of "Seeing smoke again", and the elder brother called me home for dinner. In the countryside where the dusk is getting darker, listen to the croaking of frogs like drums, and the lights in the distance sway like candlelight, warm and affectionate.
In the hazy night, Mother, where are you? Miss the smoke of cooking fires that are getting farther and farther away, and miss the people and things in the smoke of cooking fires...
