My dear parents, met on Naihe Bridge
Cheng Danmei
Just 46 days after my father passed away, and my mother also left. And it was very suddenly, and he died at the peak of the outbreak. Unexpectedly.
My mother wrote to him when her father was cremated: Please wait for me on the Naihe Bridge...
Why am I confused like that? I actually asked where the Naihe Bridge is, and I thought it was the place where she dated her father when she was young or at the beginning? My sister said, you are not educated without mothers, don’t you know the allusion of Mengpo soup ? Of course, why did I think of something else, rather than the bridge between the Yin and Yang realms! In my consciousness, I seemed to be avoiding the bridge! Did my mother already feel that she was about to walk there?
I never have the chance to ask my mother again.
Golden Wedding Photos of Father and Mother
When my father was alive, my father was the heaven of our family and my mother was the Tianliang that supported the heaven. My father’s illness or worries will calm my father a lot if he says it’s okay; when we were children, we broke our knees and bleed, and ran home. My mother blew it a few times and applied it with iodine. Often, my mother would sit in a red sweater that would be performed on the next day after I finished the show overnight; or use the old sewing machine to make the best Braggy , the best among girls. If one day my father’s friends come to visit, my mother will make a magic trick to create a table of delicious dishes with bright colors and fragrance. There are egg whites like snow covered with beads hidden in the snow on the meatballs; there are cabbage rolls like fat goose; the children's favorite shredded apple and sweet and sour pork ribs are also mother's specialty. Every time the banquet ends, the guests sincerely praise the elegant and capable hostess. Yes, my mother is really a model of being able to go to the hall and go to the kitchen!
Originally, my mother was also a woman with a high literary talent and a good essay, but because my father's light was too strong, her talent was covered and ignored. In fact, my mother also published novels and reportages, and later part of them was included in our collection "Chengmen Lixue". But my mother is more good at old-style poetry, and there has always been an old, kraft paper-based "Liu Yong Li Qingzhao's poem" published by her bedside. It can be seen from the covers with some curled edges that my mother often looks at it. There is also a gray and elegant book, "Stone Story", printed for the eighth time in Commercial Press, in 1958. The mother can almost memorize the poems in it. My father often praised this. While tidying up her mother's clothes, the younger sister saw a notebook full of her mother's poems. There is a page that my mother wrote when she came to my Hamburg house in Germany for the second time: "Hiddenly remember the old trip by the river , and the elimination is ten times. The shore is still lush, and the ferry is covered with green buildings." The lower part of the same page is obviously a casual look after taking a nap in my garden: "The eldest daughter has beautiful flowers in the garden, but the butterflies dance and bees fly happily. She sits in the rose door, and she looks like she is away from the world but like a fairy." However, the song "Jiang Chengzi Given to Mr. Ma Shixiao, a famous calligrapher in the past" further highlights the mother's poetry attainments: "Seven young people I read Huatang together, each floating, and I cannot forget it. I met by chance in Xizhai, and talked about the vicissitudes of life. How many sixty years have you lived? By the side of Xizhai, accompany the sunset. Drinking nectar in the mountains outside the mountains is particularly refreshing, and the ink grass is crazy. The couple travels with short roads and long love. I hope to gather together every year, enjoy new works, and celebrate the Double Ninth Festival."
Warm moments at the family banquet
Of course, on weekdays, father and mother often sing with husbands and wife, and sometimes women sing with husbands. We have had the days when my mother sang Peking Opera Father Erhu accompaniment, there were also scenes when my father hummed the song and shot his mother, and there were also times when my father’s literary works were given by my mother. That year, our son, their grandson, was admitted to Oxford. As grandfather's grandfather, my father immediately held the pen and wrote, and chose improvised poems from his wife and my mother to show their excitement. That kind of common happiness, cooperation and tacit understanding are as warm and down-to-earth as the sun, and is vividly displayed on the paper with joy. The poem is as follows: "I heard that I am now in the collapse of the Three Qins, and I rode the east wind into Oxford. The vast sea of learning is diligent in making rafts, and the morning comes to reflect the gate." Among them, "其" takes the Chinese name of our son.
This poem was discovered by the eldest sister in a stack of rice paper a few days before her father's death. My mother was still there at that time. Among the calligraphy treasures, there are also plum blossom poems that my father wrote for each of us three sisters at some time. When we were going to frame it, we discovered that the signature was not stamped. My sister said that this was a job that I had to ask my mother, because every time my father dropped the paper, it would be stamped by my mother. Only my mother knew which stamp to use, which name to stamp, and where to stamp it. They just work so well together. So that day, when I showed my mother some pieces of my father's calligraphy that were going to be framed, my mother immediately pointed out where the seals were missing. She said that there should be a large pen washer in your father's office, which contains all his seals. Mother's memory is so good, as expected. I found them on the large writing table in my father's writing room by the floor-to-ceiling window. Although they had been put aside for a long time since my father was hospitalized, when I held them in my hands, I could still smell the unique fragrance of the ink pad, as if my father had used them not long ago. That bright afternoon, next to the sofa where my mother was sitting, I spread out my father's calligraphy works and handed her the ink pad. Mother put on her flower glasses and picked out a few of the various stones piled up in the brush washer to examine them. Name stamps, leisure stamps... my mother had them at her fingertips. That's right, she said. Then she asked me to help her dip in ink mud and press the seal firmly on the beginning of the poem. After she finished, she asked me to find a seal and put it on the inscription. I know, it should be called and . In this way, mother covered several pieces of rice paper with one by one. Moreover, which chapter to use and how to cover it all matter. Occasionally, my mother would be surprised and say, why is there a rectangular seal missing?
I noticed that when my mother calmly but solemnly stamped her seals on several of my father's paintings, her movements were so skillful and light, and her hands no longer trembled due to illness. After covering it, she asked me to unfold it for her to see. When she was satisfied, she asked me to lay it out one by one on the sofa in my father's study. My mother said that the sunshine there is good, and the oil on the ink pad can be wet and dried quickly.
I remember clearly that my mother seemed to have completed a task that day and was very happy, and it was as if her father was watching her do it next to the sofa where she was sitting.
A recent photo of my mother
When my father was hospitalized, my mother refused to leave her home. Her sister was afraid that she would be lonely, so she wanted to take her to live with her. Her mother said, "I won't move away, so your dad still knows that I am waiting for him at home." I didn't dare to say that my father had no hope of ever returning home like he did every time he was hospitalized. But why not if she wants to keep a hope? When her father was dying, her mother visited her. When she came back, she said nothing.
After her father passed away, her mother no longer wanted to talk. She remained silent every day and stopped watching the opera programs on TV that both she and her father loved. The eldest sister finally took her mother to her home after persuasion. Despite the diligent care of her daughter's family, she finally insisted on returning to her own residence. I asked my mother why she insisted on going back. She said that the building where she lived was full of acquaintances, both upstairs and downstairs. I said, how can you meet your neighbors if you don't go out? But I understood immediately, and I said to her: I know what you want is that familiar feeling. I said, Mom, I support you! Mother smiled and said: Your grandmother said that when leaves fall, they return to their roots. Her words made me feel a little ominous, so I pretended to laugh at her and said: Grandma said to go back to my hometown. In that case, your hometown is in Jiangsu. Mother laughed again without explaining. Now I know that she may have felt like she was about to die, or maybe she was just ready for it. She was going back to her and my father's home, our home, which she felt were her roots, and saying goodbye to the world.
My mother and I originally agreed to spend the summer with her next year, and I thought I would be in the same situation as listening to my grandmother talk about home life. At least let her tell her personally why she has two parents, and what kind of person her biological father is who runs the "Northwest Culture Daily" with Song Qiyun? How she was a high school student who could write poetry, how she broke the school sports record, and how she fell in love with my father, a literary young man who had published literary works in newspapers and magazines, and how she gave up her life in the south and came to the Great Northern Wilderness. Although I have heard this story in pieces, I still want to know it from her mouth personally. But now it's too late!
My little sister wrote a long letter to her late mother, saying that it was sent to heaven. The letter will be cremated with the mother. I also wrote, it was very short, I was so sad that I couldn’t help myself: Mom, you gave birth to me and raised me, your kindness is boundless. Your kindness and beauty are my role model to death! Thank you mom for giving me the opportunity to come to this world. Being your daughter is our fate and my honor. Mom, you and Dad meet again at Naihe Bridge! Stay together! Daughter Danmei.
Written in Hamburg, Germany on December 18, 2022
Source: Guangming.com
