Memories of the old house
Wen | Sun Shuguang
These days, I have dreamed of the old house continuously. The old house in the dream, quiet and peaceful, immersed in the flow of time, like a slowly shaking cradle, let me hide inside and don't want to leave, don't want to wake up, afraid that once I leave, I will lose that warmth and soothing.
I haven't been back to my hometown for a long time since my mother's death, but I often think of the old house. Remembering those warm afternoons in the summer, I sat with my mother in the courtyard of the old house, slowly working, chatting about homework, enjoying the peace and quiet of the countryside. The sun lazily basks on the courtyard wall on the east side, leaving a dappled shadow. The neighbor's lentils climbed over the wall without seeing it, and the dark green stems and leaves were covered with purple flowers and green lentils with purple edges, looking vibrant. The platform in the courtyard was built by the idle parents, paved with a layer of soil, planted with peppers, coriander, eggplant, and became a small vegetable garden. The vegetable garden is surrounded by flowers and plants planted in various pots and pots, the moon season, caryophyllus, begonias, jade hairpins, can not die, there is no precious variety, but they are all served by the mother to thrive and compete to open, the small yard is full of the freshness of vegetables and flowers, and even has the smell of the field. The neighbor's old cat sometimes probed on the wall of the courtyard to watch the small courtyard, and then suddenly jumped into the yard, looking for food of interest, saw someone walking around, and would quickly jump on the courtyard wall to leave. Sometimes the family eats fish, and the mother will deliberately put the head fish offal on the plate next to the courtyard wall, as if hearing the call, the old cat will soon appear, jump off the courtyard wall, and crouch there slowly and satisfactorily taste its delicacy. When someone passes by, at most he just raises his head, or ignores it at all, as if the world outside the fish plate has nothing to do with it, it only cares about everything in front of it.
The West Wing of the Old House is a small two-story building with a century-old history, built by my great-grandfather, around the end of the Qing Dynasty, older than my father's age. When it was first built, the second floor was intended to be used as a private school for the children of the family, but the emergence of the new school has changed its function.
The small building encroaches on the space and sunlight of the courtyard, making the courtyard appear narrow and cramped, and the afternoon sun usually exits the courtyard of the old house soon, leaving only a mottled light and shadow on the east wall, which makes the courtyard a good place to work and relax in the summer afternoon.
Probably for some good wishes and allegories, the craftsmen carved various flowers, gourds, bats, butterflies and other patterns on the stones of the walls, and the walls were decorated with white gray sticky rubble between the floors. As children, we liked to tilt our heads and twitter and race around the walls to find different patterns. The windows are traditional wooden ledges, brushed with tung oil, maintaining the true color of the logs, but unfortunately after the wind and rain, there is already a sense of ruin. The creaky staircase in the middle of the first floor can be retracted and put away, usually put away, and put down when you want to go upstairs. This kind of architecture seemed to be a great honor in the past. For a long time, I remember that if someone from a foreigner came to inquire about our family, the villagers would usually point at the small building from a distance and tell them that there was a small building. So without having to ask about the others, the foreigners followed the high roof and found our home smoothly. The children around me are always full of curiosity about the small building, trying their best to please me, so that they can go upstairs to hide and seek hide and seek treasure.
On the left side of the ground floor of the small building is an empty hall with some furniture and miscellaneous items, on the right side there is a stove that can be cooked by fire, and the stove partition wall is a room, and there is a plate of kang in the room, which can live in people. When I was very young, I used to live with my parents, and I still vaguely remember the roof full of flowers and green paper, and when I was a child, I would often stare at the beautiful flower paper, or jump up to reach the ceiling. There is an old-fashioned lamp nest on the partition wall above the stove, and lighting the lamp at night can illuminate the room and the stove. With an oil lamp, my mother cooked in the hall or made needlework on the kang. The steam that rises when the lid is uncovered after the meal often blurs the area around the stove, and the mother's figure also shakes in this vague light and shadow. The sound of the hissing lalarna soles on the kang accompanied me through the warm winter nights of my childhood, and became the topic of praise by aunts and aunts on my feet on the first day of the new year.
The upstairs classroom, which lost its private school function, became a huge, spacious storage room after a few years, and it also became a treasure hunt that we never tire of. Upstairs you can find all kinds of strange things, connecting us with a thin line between us and the ancient times. On afternoons when I'm not in school, I'll be upstairs alone, searching, and reading. I have found my great-grandfather's painting on silk, and the amount on the painting has been forgotten, presumably the pen name of my great-grandfather. I have seen a cherry sketch, exquisite basket, full of cherries scattered inside and outside the basket, making people salivate. Although there was not a single painter in this extended family, I found my own love for painting in the pieces of paper scattered through time.
In my memory, there is a big oil basket next to the staircase, the kind of bamboo weaving, a big belly, a small closure, and the basket body is pasted with moisture-proof oil paper, which seems to have not been used in my memory, but it feels very fun. A worn-out loom was in the corner, and I had tried to shake it and make a creaking sound, but it didn't weave cloth. There is also the old-fashioned abacus used by my great-grandfather to open a money house, and the money hammer used to hold silver (is this the name?). I'm not even sure what to call it, I just vaguely remember my father calling it that way.)
The afternoon sun shines through the ancient window ledges and onto the Metasequoia floor slabs, dappled, bright and dark, making people feel quiet and sleepy. In the midst of these strange things, I felt the breath of my well-known and unknown ancestors, as if I saw the figures of their leisurely paintings, the creaking of weaving, and the crackling of the abacus. Those ancient Metasequoia wood floor slabs were transported from the distant South China Sea through the ancient Jinkou Wharf not far away, and then spliced into floor slabs by craftsmen piece by piece, which are still solid today, emitting the smell of fir wood, showing a clear wood grain, and not even feeling the wear and tear of the years.
More often, I like to cover the stairwell with a water fir board, and hide alone in the corner of the upstairs to read my father's collection of books. Several large boxes, from the line-mounted vertical writing of "The Immortal Wang Xiaohe" to the "Complete Works of Lu Xun", from "Dream of the Red Chamber" to "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", whether they can read it or not, swallow dates, read one after another non-stop, can not hear the noise outside, there is a big hidden in the small building into a unified, which cares about spring, summer and autumn and winter. Often accompanied by the light and shadow of the front window in the morning, until the light and shadow left by the rear window are ushered in, the light and shadow gradually darken, and the words on the book are gradually invisible, only to go downstairs to eat a meal in the middle of the mother's several calls, hurriedly run downstairs, get some food, and run back to the building to read while eating.
As the years passed, the old house, which was once full of people, gradually returned to calm, and now it is no longer even inhabited. The big family of more than a dozen people who used to be like today's South China Sea and North, or ancient, or work, or study, and spread out in all parts of the motherland, there are always dozens of people. A few years ago, my mother died, and only the lonely figure of my father was left in the old house, guarding the vegetable garden in the courtyard and the rising and falling sunlight on the courtyard wall. The year before, my father came to the city where I worked, and the old house was empty.
It's time to find a time to go back and see the old house, touch the soft times that were once soft, and savor the once familiar breath.
About author:Sun Shuguang, a native of Laiyang, Shandong, is a university teacher and currently lives in Tianjin. I like words, but I chose a major in science and engineering, a three-foot podium to teach avionics, and leisure after class to make pen and ink. The classroom has been working diligently for more than 20 years, teaching and solving puzzles, and dare not mislead people's children. Writing is casual, word is pleasant, occasional gains, more sleeping computers, not much published, there have been works published in the "Daily New Daily", "China Civil Aviation News" and so on. I like Wang Wei's "Walk to the end of the water, sit and watch the clouds rise". I hope that one day I can watch the clouds with the stream, read quietly, and realize my good wishes.
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One point number Jiaodong prose