When spring was just budding, I took my father to an apartment for the elderly in my city. For the normal business of my flower shop and to express my so-called literati feelings in words. Can only be charged with unfilial again. If a son is unfilial, he has no father's responsibility.
On the day of picking up my father, the wind was particularly strong, as cold as the winter wind, just like what I met when I moved to this city three years ago. Mixed with the few dust particles in this city, they rushed at me, meaning expulsion and flogging, making me feel that I don't belong to this city. In practical sense, as a rural defector, this is how I was refused to join the city. So, does the city also reject its father? What secrets does it have that I can't see?
I chose Nanyang apartment for the aged as my father's shelter, because this apartment for the aged has a huge yard with enough land with trees and flowers planted on it. There are trees in my hometown, willow, locust and poplar, all in this yard; There are cabbage flowers, plantain seeds and axe seedlings in this yard; Sparrows and swallows are also in this yard. In other words, this yard has the scenery of my hometown, so my father won't feel strange.
Even if I move my father to this city, I can't take his 10 thousand life savings, some clothes, a teapot and some tea bowls with me to his hometown. After hundreds of years of existence on the banks of the Yellow River, his hometown was finally submerged in the sea of urbanized Wang Yang. I took him from the new building to the ground, but I can't take him back to the village, back to those years when he was entangled with the soil.
two
I was still scrambling to hang up my father's clothes, make the bed and clean the bathroom when my dumb uncle jumped in. I think he took a fancy to me when I went to the apartment for the elderly several times, otherwise he wouldn't have jumped on me at an extremely fast speed before my father and I got a firm foothold.
He can't say a word, but he talks too much. He opened his mouth and danced to pull the window, which means that the window can be pulled at will, without security window or barbed wire. Open the cupboard to signal that you can hang clothes, hold out a thumb, and then hold out an index finger and a ring finger, indicating that this cupboard can be enjoyed by my father alone, unlike his two people using the same wardrobe. When people are old and blind, it is still a trivial matter to take the wrong trousers vest, and sometimes they will take the wrong trousers. Dumb uncle gave me a thumbs-up, which means that I am very filial and let my father live in a single room. Dumb uncle can change his fingers quickly, just like the finger show I saw on the Internet. His fingers are much more flexible than his bones and joints. I think the most striking thing about Uncle Dumb is not his tall head, nor the huge boil on his face, but his fingers. His finger points to a world that only dumb uncle can understand.
I'm very upset and anxious. There are a lot of things waiting for me in the flower shop, but the mute uncle's squeaking in front of me really bothers me. I nodded, opened my mouth, bared my teeth and told dumb uncle that I knew, so he didn't have to tell me anymore. When I pushed him out of the door, Uncle Dumb put his fingers together and chewed a few times, telling me to eat at eleven o'clock.
After the dumb uncle left, I told my father three times to stay away from the dumb and take care of my things. In fact, it didn't take long for me to say these words, and I found that I was wrong. My father looked blankly at this well-equipped room in the city, far from my hometown, and said that it would be nice to have a place to eat, a place to go to the toilet and a place to play.
After a long life course, my father's purpose has become simple and simple, that is, to eat and sleep, or to be alive is very good.
I took my father to the activity room, where there was a game of chess, with soldiers, soldiers, guns and Chu Han ... It seemed that I had been waiting there for a long time, just waiting for my father's arrival.
When my father saw chess, it seemed as if he had returned to the days of fighting in the mall. He didn't ask his opponent's last name, but fought with Uncle Li on the other side of the table. I am very happy to see this situation, which shows that my father still has good thinking and consciousness. But I know that neither my father nor Uncle Li sitting on the other side of the Chu River is an opponent of fate.
My father's acceptance of this city surprised me.
three
With the growth of age, I feel that the physical concept of acceleration is used in the course of the season. I can't tell the tree species in the yard by the bare branches I saw in March.
But I saw them clearly this morning and immediately recognized those trees as apricot flowers. They have the appearance of three or five plants, neatly arranged and highly unified, standing on the west side of a wall in an apartment for the elderly. Tiny pink flowers crowded the whole branch, and even a place not far from the ground was occupied by an apricot flower. Their sudden arrival surprised me and made the yard bright.
I guess, the management of the apartment planted apricot flowers in the nearest location to the building where the elderly live, in the most conspicuous location in the apartment, where the visiting elderly or relatives can reach, with the intention of inspiring the elderly in this apartment or living here. Apricots flourish together, representing prosperity. Isn't there a saying that the more you live, the more prosperous you are!
While stunning their opening, my heart ached faintly. Flowers, the most beautiful things in the world, form a cruel contrast with their aging life in the north. Old people are failing, not only losing their gender consciousness, but also losing their taste in food. Men's sex organs, women's * * *, uterus and ovaries are no longer mentioned and paid attention to.
Whether they have children or not, they live a streamlined life in the apartment. For example, in the eighties when we were studying, we always brought our own chopsticks when we went to a restaurant to eat, and then we went back to our room after dinner. Or take a Mazar and sit at the door of your room, and three or five old people sit together to pass the time. There is a saying that goes back a long time. After a long pause, I looked at the gate to see if anyone had come to visit them. Even though I understand that there is not much time left for them, I still feel that time passes slowly here.
Once I just entered the apartment door, an aunt took my arm and said that I looked like her daughter and insisted on dragging me to her room. If the staff hadn't stopped me in time, I think I would have been pulled into her uterus by her. As a writer, I can understand her helplessness and loneliness in life. Sometimes we writers talk about our loneliness in vain and exaggerate our loneliness. But compared with these old people, our loneliness is a millet.
Early in the morning, they sat in a row in the long corridor. Like some mature crops, waiting for the harvest. Quiet, silent, as if ignorant of the outside world. In this noisy world, there is nothing they are eager to do and no one they want to see. Their state scares me. It's hard to say what I'm afraid of at the moment Perhaps not afraid of them, but of human beings themselves.
Don't, living here, they really see through the world, no longer care about nostalgia, no longer hate? If at this point, people can put down everything in the world, then what's the point of running around and fighting for fame and fortune!
Every time I cross this long journey, it's just a visit. My eyes are full of tears and my heart is tortured. The smell of the old man gives me an allergic attack. Their gloom made me see my future and began to doubt the importance of the life process. This may be a pain that we humans cannot overcome.
Every time I go to see my father, I come out of the apartment building and arrive at the east of the lotus pond, I will meet an aunt. Her hair is all white, her figure is withered, and her body is about as high as the wall of the lotus pond. Every time she turns her back on me, she shakes her arm to the left a few times, then raises her leg to the right, bends her leg occasionally, and then puts it down. Her movements are extremely slight and mechanical, and she can't disturb anyone or anything, just like a shadow play manipulated by an invisible hand. Manipulating her hand can take away any part of her limbs at any time, or it can freeze her at a certain point and take her away. And I can't slap, so I have to run away without rhyme or reason. The big Chinese rose next to it is in full bloom, much like an aunt when she was young.
four
On the way back from Dongying People's Hospital, I passed the newly-built bungalow. I told my father to go home and see. Father wiped his tears and said there was nothing to see. Not only my father but also I have no intention of going home to have a look. Every time I go to Dongying and pass by those tall and new buildings, I will fly there without looking. Those buildings have everything in the city, such as tap water, natural gas, internet, brand-new floors, snow-white walls, real closets, range hoods and water heaters, which are no worse than those in the city. I just don't feel at home. I think my hometown is fixed, where a person was born and raised. It is also the most primitive forging place of a person's temperament. Not every place can choose hometown, which is the unrepeatable nature of hometown.
When I proposed to take my father to the old village that has not been demolished, my father said very hard: "Good!" Those adobe old houses are arranged in four rows in the embrace of the Yellow River to the east of the dam, which is surprisingly quiet. Those wires are still criss-crossing at high altitude, maintaining this village called Yuanzhang.
In front of his house, there is a big rusty lock, which stiffly refuses his father to enter. Father pushed open four wooden doors together, tears streaming down his face, unable to say a complete sentence.
Cities can be built one after another, but whose hometown can be shaped at will and whose hometown can start over?
When my father and I arrived at the apartment for the elderly at noon 12, we felt that we had left here for a long time. A large number of delicate and charming Chinese rose flowers have passed their heyday, only some old petals are left on the branches, and a new round of flowers are still in bud. But the lotus pond, which is as long as the building, is a lush scene. Patches of green lotus leaves densely cover most of the pool surface on both sides of the east and west, showing great vitality and excitement. On the west side of the pool, I even found a lotus flower, bathing with a pink canopy, shy and moving, welcoming my father back from the hospital with the most brilliant face. In the center of the pool, two sculptured fish are graceful, jumping freely, standing high in the air, spitting out discerning waterlines in their mouths. Those waterlines floated in the air for a while and fell into the pool and smashed some water droplets.
The signs of life created by this lotus pond are undoubtedly telling the beauty and exuberance of life and giving the old people here the courage to live.
Perhaps, I visited five or six apartments for the elderly in Bincheng, and finally chose here because of this lotus pond or the lotus in this pond. In fact, when I first saw this lotus pond in February, it was depressed and lifeless. Some lotus flowers withered and fluttered on the ice, and the pool was covered with dark stones and bricks. But I understand that all the prosperity of life comes from the initial silence and introversion, or decline. I believe and know that life and flowers are hidden in withered lotus flowers.
On the solstice of summer, lotus leaf fields and lotus flowers have a graceful demeanour, which illuminate the secluded corner in the southeast corner of the city, and also light the wick for the elderly to go out soon.
Powerful life and aging are intertwined, where they meet, look at each other and read the password of life.
five
Really, I can't describe exactly what it feels like to see him. Love, worry, fear and so on. Or I can't guess what happened in these years, which made him what he is now. His upper body and lower body formed a 90-degree angle, his face turned white, and he wore a pure green military cap with a five-pointed star shining on it.
The old people in the canteen are sitting and eating, but he is squatting on the ground to eat. Actually, eating is not accurate. He put the noodles directly into his mouth with his hands. If he sits down, he will fall down and put his feet in the air. From his back, I saw the scar he left when he tried to sit down.
As soon as he saw me, he stopped Lamian Noodles at once and looked excited from behind his glasses. His voice was urgent and crisp, lest I run away: "Daughter, can you make a phone call for me?" Immediately quoted a series of figures. That string of numbers, in groups of four, is out of order. There are four groups in all, five more than the telephone number 1 1. I was wondering when an old man came up and said, "Stop fighting. He is mentally ill. He used to be an instructor in the army. After he was discharged from the army, he was assigned to a unit, and he was insane due to divorce and other reasons ... I was speechless at the moment.
From his old face, I can still find his majestic, handsome or tall figure when he was an instructor. From the simple conversation with him, I can even hear his loud voice and strength when he shouted to stand at attention and relax.
But this handsome instructor asked others to stand up straight and go forward bravely, and finally failed to resist the bad luck in life. His back was bent and broken earlier than any soldier he had ever taught, leaving only fresh memories of the past hidden in the shining red star on his hat.
It may be the same as my situation for the first time to visit the elderly. When he squatted and walked or grilled rice with his hands, he suddenly found the target and immediately shouted the number 16. Those children who came to visit the elderly may have actually dialed that number, and the result can be imagined. That's not a phone number at all, and he doesn't want to call a designated person or a fixed area. So what's the use of storing such a string of numbers in his crazy mental field? In his memory, where did the string of numbers go, or to whom? Or is this string of numbers hiding secrets that others don't know?
When he told me this string of numbers, I didn't feel his disorder, and even felt that his thinking was a little clearer than mine. At first, the old people couldn't tell whose daughter I was and took him as my father. Old people who pass by me will tell me to lift his pants and give him a banana to eat. So, I acted as a daughter, lifted his pants from under * * to his waist and handed him a banana. He will smile at me, say thank you, my daughter, and then simply add, "Please call me!" "
A few times, I pressed the string of numbers on my mobile phone several times in a row, but I couldn't type them out at all. That string of numbers may be his expectation and hope for life, or it may be the only clear vein in the spiritual field. As a neurotic person, why bother that string of passwords for your own life? Letting that string of numbers or passwords lead him through the rest of his life is not the best ending.
On the first day of July, I went to visit my father. As soon as he entered the gate of the apartment for the elderly, he heard a loud song: "The five-star red flag fluttered in the wind, and the song of victory was so loud …" He squatted on the west wall of a bungalow in the apartment for the elderly, holding a radio in his hand and playing this song repeatedly. On that day, his hat was clean and well dressed, especially his hat. This time, he didn't notice my arrival. He was still absorbed in this piece of music in the past years. This makes me feel that he has come to his senses, or he can suddenly stand up and read the string of passwords to me.
Father, dumb uncle, uncle Li, aunt Wang who spent the rest of their lives here ... who among them doesn't have a string of passwords to fight against time and hard life!