New Year's Eve and Grandparents

When people reach middle age, they find that many of the original good things have become tasteless, such as love, such as the ideal, such as holidays. Sometimes I wonder if it's not just the skin but also the mind that ages with age. The main support for living on has become mechanical responsibility and inertia? Whenever you think about it, you miss your teenage years. Because you can do something to satisfy both the skin and the mind, there is a certain inertia but do not need to be responsible for things. Like being naughty and mischievous.

When I think back to my youth, what comes to mind is almost entirely my grandparents, because my parents were usually busy working. I grew up living with my grandfather, basically where he was, where I was, and rarely had the opportunity to leave his sight.

Grandpa was a storyteller, and he told me stories about his youth, how he was caught in a war, how he drove a horse team to Baoji to sell ceramics and grain, and how he fought with villains on the road. When my grandfather was young, he was also a famous figure on the road.

When I entered the waxing moon, my grandfather began to prepare my 20 cents New Year's money. And for this money, grandpa often bullied his son enough. I remember one year, there was really no 20 cents, grandpa was very angry, forcing dad to borrow 20 cents to give me the New Year's money. The young me is immersed in the joy of receiving the money, jumping to take my sister to buy candy to eat, and how will understand the huge pressure of life that adults bear. Years later I joked with my father, "Grandpa didn't have a throne or a mine, and even if he did, I guess he didn't have a son's share, so he gave it directly to his eldest grandson."

I was in the fourth grade when my father's brothers split up, and moved out of the original kiln after the split. A year later I also lived in school and had even fewer opportunities to meet with my grandfather. But the relationship between our grandparents and grandchildren was not affected, every weekend, my grandfather would come home to see me, watching me eat and sleep, and I also preferred to go to my grandfather during the winter and summer holidays.

That year I was in my second year, my grandfather was seriously ill, and I went home for the weekend and sat with my grandfather for a while, and said a good study, who knew that this would become the last words. When I came home again on the weekend, my grandfather had already passed away, and I was so young and ignorant that I just felt that my grandfather was asleep.

My grandmother was also a lady of the house, always clean and well brought up. She always strictly controlled my behavior habits, such as shaking legs, turning dishes, baring my mouth, and leaving things lying around were all punishable by beatings.

In my grandmother's eyes I grew up to do great things, and as long as I went into the kitchen to make trouble, I would be driven out with a burning stick. Many years later, the big things did not work out, but in the wasted years became a chef, relying on memory can make a variety of cakes made by the grandmother back then.

When I was young, I stammered and seldom spoke, and I could only speak in short sentences. In case of anger, it is more than half a day can not hold a word to. I vividly remember my grandmother stroking my head, "such a good child, the child stammering, how to find a wife when you grow up". But as I got older, the stammering gradually eased, and later became a chatterbox. The grandmother's dream still came true, years later, I led the daughter-in-law home, the grandmother saw the grandson daughter-in-law, happy. The old man only speaks in dialect, she does not understand a word of what is said on TV, but the communication with her grandson in law is still very pleasant.

On the night of New Year's Eve, my father and second uncle would take the family to third uncle's house and kowtow to grandma (grandparents live with third uncle's family), and grandma would give candy to the children to eat. I gave my grandmother money after I went to work. Grandma was so happy that she could drink a lot of white wine.

I was not at home when my grandmother died. At the end of her life, I wonder if she was concerned about her eldest grandson who was far away from home.

Another year of Spring Festival, second uncle in Chengdu son's home, third uncle in Lanzhou son's home, father in Pingliang home, a large family scattered in the end of the world. If you think about it, I have not met with my second uncle and third uncle for seven or eight years. But no matter the end of the world, the bloodline is always the line, everyone will always be grandparents' children.

The custom in my hometown is that the head of the family (the man in charge) has to give New Year's money to the whole family, the elderly have to give New Year's money to the children, and the adult children have to give money to the elderly. On the night of New Year's Eve, everyone should have money in their pockets to signify good luck and well-being in the coming year.

Each child will become a "boss", along with the growth and aging, the family in the "boss" of the turnover, everything is born and reincarnated. Today, the New Year is still the most important day of the year, we still have to fear the gods, remember the ancestors, miss the deceased and cherish the people in front of us.

Happy New Year!