The paradise of childhood

In those days, rural children could not just eat, but also help the family work. I'm afraid that no child in the countryside does not work hard, probably from the time they can walk, they have to help the family work closely, for example, when the grain drying, responsible for booming chickens to drive birds; adults work, in the field to guard the water tank, and so on. There are too many and too many jobs, anyone can be useful, the children do not know that they can take over, can take over even if they grow up.

The legendary paradise, always depicted by mythical stories of the clouds, nebulous, in which, there is no rich green and earthly fireworks. My paradise is the opposite, there is a green, and, is a vibrant green, rich in magical allure and conquest. Almost everyone has had this kind of paradise, that is, childhood.

The color of childhood is nothing less than paradise, which underlines one's life and nurtures the roots of one's destiny. Therefore, as you get older, you will yearn more to be able to venture into this spiritual and magical place again.

When I was a child, the winter was really icy, and the land that was not covered with snow and ice was frozen with a deep crack. Even so, children in rural areas rarely stay in the house except to sleep, but spend all day in the snow, crawling and rolling. As a result, cotton boots and socks are always wet, hands and feet frozen like carrots, but still like to nibble on the frozen carrots while playing outside, such as, bumping crutches, bouncing balls, and so on.

To prevent me from wiping my nose directly with the sleeves of my cotton jacket, my mother refused to waste the cloth to make two sleeves, so she sewed old thread socks on my jacket sleeves, like two hairy crab claws, which was too ugly. In this way, wiping the nose will not have to be muttered, sneaky, can be openly with the wipe, left and right. Half a winter down, the two sleeves of the jacket will be shiny, like wrapped in iron plate as smooth and rigid. It was not until the New Year that my mother took off the two iron plates, and finally I could see and enjoy the real and soft two cotton jacket sleeves.

After the Spring Festival, when the snow on the ground gradually melted, the first to sense the message of spring, but the underground bugs. In the field of the edge of the relatively soft surface of the soil, there are some green bean-sized holes. When you dig a tender grass root into the hole, you can catch a white worm, and then you can use the worm to catch birds or break the ice to fish. Birds and fish are not so easy to catch, but as a game is very exciting and extremely tempting. Although it is played every year, it is always enough.

After the second day of February, when the dragon raises its head, the land starts to green up and the countryside comes alive. What I look forward to is the elm trees bloom, the branches are full of bunches of green and white elm money, fragrant, slightly sweet, can be eaten raw, can be boiled porridge, can also be mixed into the grain pasta paste biscuits, no matter how to eat are delicious.

The rural meals, every day the same set, can change the pattern is the holiday. The most difficult time, commonly known as "green and yellow" - yellow food has been eaten up, new food has not yet come down. But farmers can not not work in the field. They need to have food in their stomachs, so they can turn it into strength.

When it comes to childhood paradise, there is so much talk about playing and eating, is paradise just eating and playing? This standard is too low and too unproductive for today's children to understand. Modern society is rich in material goods, a wide variety of food, but, unfortunately, when I was a child, children how to make ends meet, always a major problem for parents. The young, feel the stomach is always empty, in the morning, drink three bowls of sweet potato porridge, small stomach bulging, walk five miles, and then feel the stomach deflated. Perhaps then the rural children's activity, the usual meals and less meat, more coarse grains, digested quickly, the stomach is very easy to starve.

People who are easily hungry, eat anything is to enjoy, they feel that heaven is not in heaven, in front of them is heaven. I remember, every time I came home from the outside in my childhood, whether I came back from school, or work or play, the first action is to find something to eat, as if to enter the home is to eat. As the saying goes: "Half a kid, eat the old man." The people who will live, will put the basket of dry food hanging high on the roof, one, to prevent children; two, to prevent the dog. It does not matter, can not find food at home, go outside to play wild food, country children will always find a way to reward themselves - that is, eat according to the season, with the times.

As soon as the spring wheat is filled, you can burn it in the ground and eat it. The aroma, the taste, the joy of the wild, is incomparable to anything you eat now. In summer and autumn, the crops in the ground began to ripen one after another, the field yard melons and pears and peaches gradually full, rural boys can feast on every day. The green beans, corn in the field now break now burn, than take home and then put in the stove pit burn out of the fragrance. At this time, when you come home from school, you no longer go straight to the meat and potatoes basket, but throw your school bag and run to the garden. The family's wheat field and vegetable garden were connected together, surrounded by a small river and full of fruit trees, so I would go up to the tree to pick a pocket of red dates or find a ripe sunflower and break a pocket of full seeds before going to play with my peers or work as the adults assigned. In fact, whether playing or working, the mouth is never idle.

When there is a disaster, rural children will not forget to eat a lot. For example, when there is a locust plague, locusts fall from the sky like a hurricane stirring up the sand and rocks. No one can understand where they come from, how there are so many of them, and why there is no growth process from small to large, but once they show up, they are all fierce grasshoppers, as if they are dark clouds that come with the wind and weave a "net" that destroys everything. After the "net", the crops are left bare stalks, endless green, turned into a white. The adults went crazy, knowing that it would not help, but they still did not eat or drink, and they fought or smoked day and night. The children's anger against the locusts was manifested in the eating of roasted grasshoppers, shoveling them onto the fire with shovels and eating the yellow seeds of the cooked grasshoppers, which smelled so good! Each one of them ate the small mouth black.

In those days, rural children could not just eat, but also help the family work. I'm afraid that no child in the countryside does not work hard, probably from the time they can walk, they have to help the family work closely, for example, when drying grain, responsible for booming chickens to drive birds; adults work, in the field to guard the water tank, and so on. There are too many and too many jobs, anyone can be useful, the children do not know that they will be able to take care of things, can take care of things even if they grow up.

There is always a sense of honor when a boy goes to the ground for the first time, similar to the "Coming of Age Day" in foreign countries. The first time I was told to work in the field like an adult, I was about five or six years old, and I remember not going to school yet, carrying a small stool and going to the carrot field with my mother to plant the seedlings. My mother was carrying a bamboo basket with a jar of water in it and a matzah in her other hand. The carrots were planted in the middle of a corn field, squarely five acres in size, green and flush, growing as densely as straw. The seedlings start at the edge of the field, and the mother sits on the matzah and explains carefully while giving the child an example. First, she asked how thick the largest carrot was, and said that a fist of space should be left between the two seedlings, and that the space should be left evenly, but not too rigidly, and that the seedlings should be pulled out of the small ones and left in the big ones ......

Many years later, I joined the army as a naval cartographer, and when I used a needle to point the beach on the drawing board, I often remembered the lesson my mother taught me about interplanting. The point of the beach is similar to the carrot seedlings, like the eye of the sieve, point out the regular diamond shape. At that time, my biggest problem was that I couldn't sit on my butt, and once the novelty wore off, I had no patience. A while squatting, a while standing up, a while drinking water, drinking the belly bulging, and then keep peeing ......

Later, my mother lowered the conditions, I can not work, but can not run around, so as not to step on the carrot seedlings. So, the mother kept telling some interesting stories to attract the child to keep around. From the stars in the sky to the bears on the ground ...... it was a happy afternoon. Since I was able to run in the field, I have rarely been that close to my mother.