When I was 6 years old, I started renting houses with my parents and living in various places. I would often just move in one day and pack up my luggage and run away in the middle of the next night. It's not that we don't want to pay back the money, it's just that my father has l

01

When I was 6 years old, I started renting houses with my parents and living in various places. I would often just move in one day and pack up my luggage and run away in the middle of the next day.

It’s not that we don’t have a home. The house in our hometown has been renovated very well. There are two three-story toon trees planted on the left and right of the spacious yard. The four brick houses have bright four-corner windows.

But we couldn't go back. The debt collectors often knocked on the door in the middle of the night, which scared my mother so much that she couldn't sleep all night.

It’s not that we don’t want to pay back the money, it’s just that my father has lost money in business in the past few years, and my mother is pregnant and can’t go out to work. It’s time for me to go to elementary school, and the days are getting tighter and tighter every day. Bar.

At the beginning of spring, my father went to his uncle’s house and borrowed 4,000 yuan, saying that he wanted to rent a small store on the South Outer Ring Road to start a business. My uncle’s family is better off than ours, but our two older sisters who are studying at home come home asking for money, and my grandma is also raised in their home, so the daily expenses are not small.

Dad was able to get these four thousand yuan, and he was scolded by his aunt. He knew it was for his own good, but when he was in his thirties, he still had to be educated by his sister-in-law, which made dad feel uncomfortable.

With money in hand, my father really opened a small business on the road of South Outer Ring Road and started a business like his uncle's. After all, there are people in this industry to help him, so it will be smoother.

The neighbor next door is a restaurant owner. A group of old men from the Northeast bring many beautiful girls. The men cook and the women serve. They looked vicious, but they were very nice to me. There are two aunts who always tease me with candies and biscuits from time to time, so I dance hard for them and play with treasures to make them happy.

My mother told me to stay away from them, but I didn’t understand. It wasn’t until one night when the sound of smashing things and several men yelling and cursing came from their room that I learned from my father. , this is a bunch of bad people.

Opening a restaurant is just a cover, those women are their tools to make money. From that moment on, I despised this group of people, and I didn’t even care about the candies they gave me.

Dad, with the help of his uncle, works much more smoothly and can earn at least 200 to 300 yuan a day. But as my mother's belly grew bigger day by day, my father sat on the bed every night, smoking and worrying.

"It will cost at least six thousand yuan to be hospitalized." Dad held a half-burned cigarette butt between his arms, a sad look on his face, and muttered without raising his head.

"The due date will be in one month. How much money do we have left?" My mother was half lying on the sofa. Her round belly made her feel uncomfortable all over. She couldn't sit down or lie down, and she kept twisting her body. .

"There's still two thousand left." Dad exhaled a puff of thick smoke, choked and stared blankly, unable to open his eyes. The wrinkles on his forehead were tightly knitted, and he was very melancholy.

"Would you like to borrow some from eldest brother?" Mom asked tentatively.

"No, his eldest son is in high school this year, and his family's expenses have increased a lot. I have had a headache these past few days, and I have been to the hospital twice. I have no money, so I don't dare to go, and I don't dare to say anything. My elder brother knew my difficulties and didn't say anything to me. How could I have the nerve to ask him to borrow money again? Besides, I haven't paid back what I borrowed last time, so that doesn't make sense to my elder sister-in-law. "

What should I do? It's really a penny that stumps a heroic man. Dad used to be a bit lazy, but now that it's time to spend money, he works day and night and can't make enough money.

02

There is a yard full of weeds behind the small house we rented. This small yard is shared with people from the hotel next door. They raised a dachshund , which often wandered around in the haystack. My mother also raised a few old hens, firstly to lay eggs, and secondly, when the baby is born, they can be used to make soup during confinement.

I got off school early that day, and there was nothing interesting to do, so I ran to the small yard to pick Setaria , and acted as a little princess by myself, shuttling back and forth in the grass.

Suddenly I saw gold shining brightly under a leaf. I stepped forward and picked it up. It turned out to be a golden Bodhisattva pendant, which was half as big as my hand.

Although I don’t know what this is, its golden appearance tells me that it must be a treasure. Without thinking too much, since it was picked up by this princess, it belongs to me. I stuffed it into the treasure box in my drawer as usual.

Also in the box are some beautiful stones picked up from the roadside, smooth broken glass, and paper cranes made of leftover candy wrappers.

"Sister-in-law, have you seen a golden Buddha pendant? Is it so big?" The man next door stood in front of my mother, gesturing with his hands, asking about the golden Buddha pendant. It seemed that he had thrown it away, but my mother didn't know that I had picked it up, so she could only shake her head and express regret.

At night, my mother was packing my schoolbag and saw that the small drawer where I kept my treasures was open, so she wanted to help close it. It just so happened that my birthday was coming up in the next few days, so my mother planned to secretly put the prepared small gift in my baby box as a surprise for me.

As soon as I opened the box, the golden Bodhisattva pendant was displayed in front of my mother. She looked at me and then at the pendant in shock. I had fallen asleep a long time ago and was mumbling in my sleep. My mother quickly called my father, not knowing how to explain it to the neighbors.

After all, my mother said she had never seen this pendant during the day. If she took it out again this time, she would be afraid that people would say that she wanted to deny it and that she had done a good deed and would get a bad reputation.

Dad looked at the golden pendant in front of him and fell into deep thought. According to the recycling price of old gold at that time, this piece of gold was worth at least 10,000 yuan. With it, my mother will not have to worry about money for production.

After staying up for three nights with such uneasiness, my father finally couldn't stand it anymore. Instead of staying here and looking at the faces of your neighbors every day, as if you have committed a big crime, it is better to move away. If you can't see the person who lost this piece of gold, you will feel better, and you won't be so afraid and blame yourself.

On the fourth day, my father sold all the belongings in the rental house and we returned home. At this time, there were less than five days before my mother's due date.

The father who lost his job calculated his life every day. Although the money obtained from selling gold can help us survive for a while, this is not a long-term solution after all. The inner torment was even more unbearable. Every time I spent money, I would recall the neighbor man staring at me and asking my mother, "Have you ever seen a golden Buddha pendant?"

One day, two days, three days...

Seven days have passed since my mother's due date, but she has no intention of giving birth at all.

Dad was worried and walked around the yard anxiously.

"Let's go to the hospital."

03

After the examination, the doctor told me that the umbilical cord was wrapped around the child's neck and the fetus was not in the correct position. There was no way to deliver normally, and the only option was a caesarean section.

When the father heard the news, he was so frightened that he squatted on the ground. I had long known that doing bad things would lead to retribution, but I didn’t expect that this retribution would come so quickly and fall on my wife and children.

The nurse came to my father to confirm his signature with the surgery form. After some consultation, my father learned that the surgery fee alone would cost tens of thousands of yuan, which would not be enough to cover the entire family's income.

The family is stretched thin, and they don’t even have money for food. We can’t let mother and son starve as soon as they are discharged from the hospital, right? There was no other way, so dad begged his uncle again.

"Do you think of me as your eldest brother?" The uncle slapped his leg, his teeth itching with anger, "You don't have to tell me or my mother about such a big thing as my sister-in-law having a baby?"

"Pa!" The uncle threw a bundle of hundred-yuan bills in front of his father: "Your sister-in-law and I have prepared money for you a long time ago. Your sister-in-law asked two days ago that the due date of delivery is within a few days. Why?" I didn’t hear anything from you. I said don’t worry, you must call in advance. Look! If you don’t have any money, you can’t come here! Dad knows that his uncle has good intentions, but he also doesn't want to cause trouble to others. If anything happens, he can handle it himself.

The operation was scheduled for one day later. The moment his brother was born, his father knelt on the ground and cried bitterly. Fortunately, mother and son were safe.

This matter is finally over, but the piece of gold that was picked up but not returned became my father's worry. After my mother was discharged from the hospital, my father had time to go back to the house we rented at the time. But the building was already deserted and the door was locked. The landlord said that the neighbor and his group were reported to be doing some illegal business. Not long after we moved out, they were taken away by a police car overnight.

In this way, their money can be considered ill-gotten gains, but my dad committed a crime if he picked up someone else's lost property and did not take the initiative to return it, but kept it privately. Although no one came to punish him, the suffering in his heart would not be erased for a long time in the coming years.

However, it was after this incident that my father deeply realized the difficulty of having no money. He followed his uncle and started a real business. Not only did he repay the debts he had owed before, but he also made a fortune Not a small deposit.

Recently, our family finally decided to buy a house in the city. Dad said that my brother and I will never be lazy people in the future. Suffering a little physical pain is nothing, but the torture in the heart is the most unbearable.

Yes, a life that only lives once is of course more passionate than anyone else. The expectation of everything is the meaning of living every day. That is the best life.