Never-missing prose

Mother sat at the table, slightly bloated, but her needle and thread swam freely in the first mate's cross stitch. I reached out and tried to take the needle from my mother's hand, but my mother ruthlessly stopped me. "Forget it, it's not enough trouble for me to sew wrong." I brazenly took back my hand. "Mom, why don't you think I look like a tailor's daughter at all?"

one

As long as I can remember, I fell asleep with the sound of my mother's sewing machine every night, monotonous but rhythmic. I woke up with the sound of my mother's sewing machine every morning, day after day, year after year.

Mother has a pair of skillful hands like a weaver girl. There is no style she can't cut, and there is no skirt she can't make. In that era when few people bought ready-made clothes, people always came and went at home, and all kinds of fabrics piled up into hills.

No matter how busy she is, my mother takes time every Sunday to start from our village, which is not too far away, and take the bus to the city. Mom never lets go of any shopping mall, and stops to touch her favorite clothes when she sees them. Sometimes, my mother simply stands at the intersection with heavy traffic and looks at passers-by. When she meets something that makes her eyes shine, her mother will rush over. First, she will sincerely praise passers-by, and then ask for measurement. As she wrote, she would talk to passers-by about where she bought the cloth and how much it cost. On the way home, my mother had such a piece of cloth in her hand. One night later, my sister and I put on enviable new clothes, the same texture, different colors and styles. Later, someone came to my mother and said that she would make a dress with the same style as my sister or me.

Now that I think about it, I have never worn my sister's old clothes, which is more or less related to my mother's desire to push her own "demo". My mother always dresses me and my sister neatly, and there are always bows made of various ribbons on her braids. In that era when colors were too monotonous and clothes styles were too uniform, my sister and I became my mother's "image ambassadors". Wherever we go, we become the focus of many eyeballs, and my mother always smiles, so I can understand the pride and pride in her eyes.

With her intelligence, diligence and hard work, my mother with only primary school education won the reputation of "10,000 yuan households" in rural areas far and near, and the close-up photos of her mother once firmly occupied the layout of township publicity columns.

two

Mother's "tailor shop" is booming. What my sister and I can do is to change the thread of sewing machine and sewing machine according to the color of the clothes my mother wants to sew. Besides, my mother doesn't allow us to touch more. My sister and I secretly sewed the six pieces of cloth into a socket while my mother was away, and my mother found it every time. Mom said that my sister and I used uneven force, and the speed of stepping on the sewing machine was fast and slow for a while, and the original smooth sewing machine would be wrinkled and uncomfortable by both of us. Many people advised my mother to pass on her skills to our sisters, and she always shook her head. My sister and I both know that my mother's greatest wish is that we can leave the countryside and eat commodity grain, and the only way to leave the countryside is to take exams.

Every holiday, my mother will send my sister and me to my home in the city for a few days, taking a completely different street from the countryside; Eat a completely different meal from the countryside; Living a completely different life from the countryside, especially the shining galaxy that illuminates the road at night, makes my mother yearn for it. Mother always intentionally or unintentionally mentioned that the blind fortune teller divined my sister and me, saying that my sister and I were destined to eat "imperial food" and would not fall in the countryside. Mother always asks us to stand, sit, eat, sleep and laugh by the standards of children in the city. There are hosts and guests at home. ......

In the countryside in the 1970s, most children had to help their parents do housework, plow fields, mow grass and feed pigs after school, but our three brothers and sisters always waited for their mother to shout for dinner before running home. Up to now, I don't know what kind of labor intensity our parents have endured in order to make our arms and knuckles not as strong as other rural children, and to make us as delicate as urban children.

three

Being admitted to a financial school means getting rid of the countryside completely; It means you don't have to work hard like your parents, facing the loess and facing the sky; It means that I have become a real "city dweller" since then. My mother stopped asking me to study hard, but began to teach me to wash clothes and cook. In my mother's words, since I am a woman, I will be a woman who goes to the hall and goes to the kitchen.

Every Sunday, my clothes are dried on the long wire in the yard. At that time, there was only one single-cylinder washing machine at home, and it was necessary to constantly get clothes in and out. The water is cold in winter, and my strength is weak. I hardly screw all my clothes together and hang them directly on the wire. Once, when I had just washed all the clothes and prepared a delicate waist, the wire could not bear the freezing pressure and broke. While wiping my tears, I picked up a dress covered with sand, and it took me three times as long to wash the sand thoroughly. That year, I tasted hardship for the first time and realized the hardships of my parents. That year, I was sixteen.

Every Sunday is also an important day to improve family food. Everything my mother has seen and can buy back, no matter how high or low, my mother moved home and asked me to follow the recipe. Whether I burnt peanuts into coke; Or at the last moment of dumpling stuffing, I mistook white sugar for monosodium glutamate, resulting in a full pot of stuffing being poured into the pigsty; Mom didn't complain about wasting a pot of stewed fish that even pigs didn't bother to smell. To my mother's delight, my cooking skills were fully affirmed on the day when my sister invited my colleagues to dinner at home. I played the leading role in four tables of dishes, from preparing dishes to assembling dishes to steaming, stewing and frying.

four

I have been frugal since I was a child, and I don't have much demand for material life. After four years of financial school, my mother always gives me 35 yuan of pocket money at the end of the month, but my sister, who goes to college hundreds of meters away from me, can't hold it for a month 100 yuan. My mother always looks at me with pity. "Our family has money, so don't be reluctant to spend it." No matter how I promised, I really never wronged myself. I really want to buy something, but my mother always doesn't believe me. My mother tried to instill in me the idea that "money is for spending, and money is needed to make money", but I still let her down.

Today, my mother often said, "Your sister and brother have several houses and a lot of savings. You can have whatever you want." No matter how I explain to my mother, although I don't have many houses, I still live spacious and comfortable; Although I don't have that much money, I have never worried about money. Mom always shakes her head. "When children grow up, there are more and more places to spend money. Sometimes you are in a hurry. " I don't think so. "I'm in no hurry. Didn't you say that my sister and brother are better than me? Then borrow it. " My mother gave me a white look. "You, you can only do this."

five

Sometimes I ask my mother, "Mom, when we were young, why did you always smile at others, but you were indifferent to the three of us?" Mom was very helpless: "At that time, I was too young to be competitive, and I didn't have time to take care of you, and I was afraid that you would learn badly. This is the most effective way to make you afraid of me. " I am unwilling: "Mom, if you go back to that time, will you make less clothes, earn less money and make time to hug us?" The mother sighed: "Who doesn't want to be closer to their children? It makes me feel bad to watch you slip away when you see me. " . Especially you, you are with your grandmother all day and don't say a few words to me all year round. "Mother paused briefly:" I am strict with you, but think about it carefully. How many times have I lost my temper with you since childhood? "Did you hit you?" I curled my lips: "I'm so scared by you that I dare not make mistakes." My heart is stretched. Indeed, even after my brother and I split our big mirror into three pieces, my mother didn't blame us a little. She just found tape to stick the cracks together and made new clothes, because we left the preheated electric iron on the new clothes that my mother had just sewed for my brother.

I leaned against my mother's shoulder and gently shook her arm. "Mom, one last question. Am I your own daughter or not? Why don't I look and temper like you at all? Did you really pick me up? Did you pick it up from under the bridge or from the ditch of the dead child? " I have asked this question thousands of times since I was a child, but my mother still adopts the usual practice-noncommittal and disdainful to answer.

My mother's warm body temperature passed to me, and I held my mother tighter. Only when mother became another little life did she begin to understand that love was in the voice of mother's sewing machine; In the hard work of my mother going to bed late and getting up early; In the mother's pretense of stern exhortation; In the case that my mother expects her daughter to become a phoenix ... It turns out that the maternal love I have been longing for runs through my life, runs through every moment of my growth, and has never been lacking.