In the summer in my memory, I seem to have been in a “flowing” state, either taking the train to my grandmother’s house in my hometown, or taking a boat to the small island where my father worked.
Every time, my mother looked at my little back on the platform or on the shore, and greeted her long vacation of more than half a month with a smile.
When I was young, my father made a little money, and like many people around him, he used the money to do aquaculture. The island where Dad lives is far away from home, and he spends most of his time on the island, returning home every other month. When I was young, I missed him very much. I called him more than a dozen times a day and asked him over and over again when he would be back. His answer was often “soon, soon”.
I counted the days amidst the sound of “soon, soon”. What I look forward to most when I come home from school every day is to see his figure, but every time I run home, the house is still empty and quiet as usual. Gradually, I began to understand that Dad’s “soon, soon” is the most unreasonable word in the world.
After too many failed hopes, I began to learn to suppress the expectation in my heart. I told myself not to think about it, Dad may or may not come back tomorrow, I will go to school, leave school, do homework, sleep as usual, and spend an ordinary day.
Whenever I think this way, I will be pleasantly surprised, so I often deceive myself, telling myself to be free and easy even though I am looking forward to it. A child who is less than ten years old makes himself look old-fashioned and profound.
If one day when you come home from school and you can smell the strong aroma of vegetables when you walk more than ten meters away from the door of your house, then it must be that your father is back. I just trotted and jumped into the house, dropped my schoolbag and moved to my father: “Look if I have grown taller again, Bibi, Bibi.”
We have a lot to say, mainly because I talk a lot, I keep asking all kinds of questions, and my father sometimes pretends not to hear. I put my head on him like a puppy and keep acting like a baby. I must get his answer, and I don’t say no.
At that time, my father hadn’t given up smoking, so he would secretly give me 20 yuan while my mother was out, and let me go to the small shop to buy a box of 10 yuan Hongtashan, and I could keep the rest of the money for myself. To be honest, ten yuan is not much, but for an elementary school student who lives on spicy noodles, it can take at least ten days and a half a month.
The days passed quickly, and when I saw my father washing his face and shaving, I knew he was going back to the island again. I started to be quiet, didn’t say anything, followed behind his ass, and I went wherever he went.
I usually don’t cry when my father returns to the island. I have experienced such partings too many times, and I know that I will fall into an endless loop of self-discovery and self-deception.
Later, when I grew up, I was able to go to and from school alone, and gradually my mother assured me that I would go further afield. In the summer vacation, she would send me to the train and let me go to my grandma’s house alone, and get off at the station, and my grandma would pick me up at the terminal there.
Maybe I was tired of the TV with no signal in the countryside and the eczema growing on my body. I asked my mother if I could go to my father’s island for the summer vacation, and they agreed after some discussion. So when I was twelve years old, I took a boat to my father’s island for the first time by myself.
In fact, the life on the island is no different from that in the countryside at my grandma’s house. I still can’t find a bag of Shiwenxiang melon seeds for 50 cents in ten miles and eight villages. There is still no signal on the TV. Even the place where my father and I live doesn’t even have a TV. I have many memories of an island hut where I can hear the sound of the waves. Now I can smell the smell in that room when I close my eyes. My father and I wash our faces and hands with rose-scented soap every day. With a strong rose smell, although that smell is very cheap, it is also the smell of a memory.
The boat docked, and my father picked me up. We had to take a small fishing boat for another half an hour to reach the small island where he usually lived and worked. The people on the island asked my father with an accent that was similar to mine but somewhat different: “This is your girl? She is so tall! She has long hands and feet, and she will definitely be a big model in the future!”
But who would have thought that after I was twelve years old, I hardly grew any longer, and people saw me later I will not comment on my height anymore, I will only say that this kid has really big feet!
My father and I live on a cliff by the sea. In the summer evening, when we open the window, we can hear the sound of waves beating against the rocks. What are also “charming” are the “whirring” sound of fans and the “buzzing” sound of mosquitoes. The mosquitoes on the island are really poisonous. In just one night, my father and I with type O blood will be bitten all over with red and swollen bumps. From a distance, our whole body is even more swollen than the day before.
I was very greedy, and every day I yelled that my father would go to the small shop to buy delicious food, but it was difficult to find any decent shops on that undeveloped island. Seeing the “little padded jacket” rolling on the ground, he surrendered. We locked the door and set out on the long road to find shrimp crackers.
On the only way in and out, there is a half-meter-wide soil ditch, which was formed by the long-term erosion of spring water. Every time I pass by there, I have to be fully prepared and make a leap to cross it cleanly. If I delay my movement, one leg will step into the ditch and get covered in mud. There were several failures before, so facing the ditch was very psychological, and every time I went there, I felt scared.
The weather on the island was bad in those few days. The road just after it rained was full of mud. I tiptoed behind my father, my mind was full of my shrimp crackers. When I was about to reach the ditch, my father stopped. It turned out that the heavy rain the day before had washed the ditch into a wider and deeper “abyss”.
The two of us are facing the ditch. Going down is the sea. It is impossible to swim over it. Going up is a mountain. It will take a lot of time to climb over. The only way is to face the “abyss” in front of us, jump in first and then climb. come out. Just thinking about this operation gives me a headache, and when I think about doing it again when I come back, my head hurts even more. But compared with these difficulties, I still want to eat shrimp crackers.
I have already imagined that I am lying on the kang, leaning against the pile of quilts, eating shrimp crackers and drinking eye-catching, as if I was in the state of a lady smoking opium in the black and white photos of the Republic of China-it turns out that desire can really overcome fear.
Finally, after wading through mountains and rivers, my father and I found an old small shop, so old that I even felt that the owner’s world was black and white. Accompanied by the dim lights in the store, I searched, but there were no shrimp crackers, nothing eye-catching, nothing, and I was extremely disappointed. Dad looked at my frustrated face, turned around and asked the boss: “Is there any canned food?”
The boss took out a tin can from his dangling shelf and wiped the dust off it. We leaned over and took a closer look, and it turned out to be canned pears! This kind of stuff is not common.
The tin cans in the 1990s have not yet evolved into the current easy-to-pull version. You can only cut a circle along the side with a kitchen knife, then take off the tin lid, and pour out the contents to eat. There were no kitchen knives where we lived, so my father asked the boss to open the can on the spot, and asked for an iron spoon for me to dig and eat.
After taking a sip of the soup, the taste was okay. I thought that if there were no shrimp crackers, canned pears would be fine. I dug it spoonful by spoonful, and it soon bottomed out, and I didn’t let go of the last bite, because I knew how I got here, and I don’t know when I’ll eat it next time! Thinking of this, I exerted extra force, wishing I could plunge myself into the tin can.
I dug vigorously along the edge of the tin can, because the mouth of the tin can was scraped open with a kitchen knife, and the edge was very irregular and sharp, and my hand was scratched out a big hole of one centimeter long , blood gushed out instantly.
Dad said, “It’s over, it’s over,” and asked the boss if there was any place on the island that sold things like Band-Aids and purple syrup. Not to mention, although you can’t find delicious shrimp crackers in this dark little shop, there are Band-Aids. Dad has never done any fine work, and he is also at a loss when he looks at my bleeding wound. He pressed one end of the Band-Aid, straightened the other end, and wrapped it around my little finger twice, exhausting the circumference of the Band-Aid.
The little finger was bound so tightly that it could hardly be bent, but fortunately the bleeding stopped, the pain was no longer severe, and she even lost consciousness. I wrapped up the wound and forgot the pain, so I just played with my unbendable little finger all afternoon. At night, I was having dinner at my father’s friend’s house. His daughter-in-law asked my father, “What’s wrong with this child’s hand? It’s all purple.” My father raised my hand and saw something was wrong
. Deep purple fades to pink. A friend’s daughter-in-law has been scolding her father: “You are a father. If you didn’t find out early, the child’s little finger would be necrotic.” Although life on the island is boring, as long as you are with your father, no matter
how boring you are, it is not boring It’s also a day to braid him, and it’s also a day to go to the mountains to eat canned food. In short, there are new things every day.
On the morning of leaving the island, my father drove a boat and led me to the small island in the middle of the sea. I remember when I was in the house before, I saw the small island from a distance, and I didn’t realize how far it was from the shore. Who knew it would take so long to sail.
Dad got off the boat and tied the rope to a rock on the shore. After fixing it, he turned around and carried me off the boat. I looked around carefully, there were no trees on the island, and weeds grew luxuriantly. Dad pushed aside the grass on the bank, revealing a small path. I followed my father, and he said to me behind me, “Have you learned from Mr. Lu Xun’s “Hometown”?” “Dad, who is Lu Xun?” “You don’t even know Mr. Lu Xun, he said “There is no road in the world, and a road becomes a road when there are many people walking.” Do you think there is a road because there are people walking, or is it because the road is there?” “I don’t know, Dad, I am thirsty. In this
way, the two of us chatted all the way, and finally climbed to the highest point of the island. It turned out that there were people living on the island, and there was a big black dog. The big black dog was very excited when he saw someone coming, and jumped up hard to break free from the restraints, but the force between objects is mutual, the more force it exerts, the greater the reaction force of the dog chain, and it bounced its body back abruptly. He also took advantage of the opportunity to overturn his own job.
A man came out of the house and cursed at the dog. I still don’t know the name of that uncle, but I met him when I was a child. My father didn’t tell me how to call him, so I always call him “Uncle Sea Island” in my heart.
He looked up and saw my dad and me, and came over to say hello warmly. The two pushed and shoved, and made some “kind greetings” between men. I stood by, bewildered and at a loss.
”Old girl, you can sit in the house and watch TV by yourself, and I will have a conversation with my uncle.” I felt relieved when I heard this sentence, and quickly escaped from their incomprehensible “war”, “history” and “political” issues.
After staying on the small island for half a month, I finally got my hands on a TV, but where does the TV in this room have channels? I sat on my uncle’s iron bed, staring at the screen full of snowflakes. The signal on the island is very faint, and occasionally I can hear a line or two of dialogue between characters in a snowflake. I don’t know if it is Jin Yong’s martial arts drama or Zhou Xingchi’s comedy. I must have sat there for a long time that afternoon, because I deeply felt my butt flatten. Finally, my father called me outside, which was a signal for me to leave.
”Uncle Sea Island” will go down to buy food after a long period of time. Most of the time he stays on the island with the big black dog. There is really no decent food to entertain us. My father and I want to say goodbye before the sun goes down. “Uncle Sea Island”, go down the way you came.
The sunset on the sea is as beautiful as the sunrise. My yellow hair is shining with golden light under the sunset. The advertisement said that this is a manifestation of zinc deficiency in the body. On the way back, my father and I slowed down our pace and didn’t talk too much. We just walked quietly, listening to the cries of frogs and insects in the grass in the summer evening. I was wondering what delicious food my dad would give me when I go back at night? Dad is thinking about going to buy a box of mosquito coils and light them at night, so that the girl will not be bitten so much.
In the summer of the island in my memory, the rain was so heavy that it stirred up layers of water mist on the sea; the wind was so strong that it lifted up my skirt and covered my whole face; I scratched it all day and all night, and I still have several obvious scars on my legs.
Every time I put on my socks and see those few scars, it brings my thoughts back to summer in the island. When the tide is low, will “Uncle Sea Island” lead his big black dog down the island to the world on the shore?
