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On this day, I strolled around the village with my child in my arms and walked to the door of a farmer's house. I saw a big piece of white chicken feather hanging on the concrete floor. Suddenly a strong wind blew, and the lighter feathers fluttered in the air like white butterflies.
I suddenly remembered something my father told me when I was a child. Those words that sound strange, seem to have some truth and seem to be wrong, I jokingly call them "father's famous sayings."
02
Seeing me reading, my father would say, "Don't look at the outlaws of the marsh, but always look at the Three Kingdoms." I just looked up at my father, didn't ask why, didn't argue with him, looked back, and continued to bury myself in reading.
My father encourages us to study. One of the most regrettable things in his life is that he went to school too late and studied too little. Therefore, for us, he strongly hopes that we will study for a few more years, and he always makes up his mind that he and his mother will let us learn even if they bargain.
But I have never communicated with my father about reading and what books to read. After all, reading is a very private matter.
Sometimes, my father, like a philosopher, said something like "the journey is short, but it is long". I am still young, and I often forget his feelings suddenly.
However, I listened carefully to one sentence, which I remember deeply. We even discussed it. Today, I sometimes recall my conversation with my father.
At this time, the olfactory memory was also mobilized, so I seemed to be in the burnt smell of burning chicken feathers and the foul smell of boiled chicken feathers.
03
Father said that chickens are treasures. Hearing this sentence, I couldn't wait to ask my father. I vaguely remember asking him with an aggressive look on his young face, asking him what chickens can do besides eating meat.
Even if smelly chicken manure can be used as fertilizer, what's the use of chicken feathers? Nothing more than a feather duster and a comb. Oh, by the way, the movie also took a chicken hair letter, but those are not treasures, are they?
My father listened patiently to me talking to myself, and he was eloquent. He just smiled, the wrinkles around his eyes piled up, and his eyes immediately filled with undisguised joy.
I finally responded to his words so that he could teach me a good lesson. Maybe it's because he enjoys the way children look up to him, or maybe he wants to be a know-it-all in his daughter's mind. What my father told me was the medicinal value of chicken feathers, which I didn't know.
04
My father is a carpenter, dealing with all kinds of tools every day. Saws, axes and hammers are all sharp tools. In addition, my father touches hard wood every day, so there will always be large and small wounds on his hands inadvertently.
Father's skin healing ability is extremely poor, and the wound will become inflamed and suppurated if he doesn't treat it for a few days. However, he paid too little attention to these minor injuries. Of course, the hard times didn't give him the energy to treat himself more attentively. So he still often ignores the wounds on his hands.
He often goes through a long process, bruises, bleeding, skin pus, and then slowly heals. Others can be cured in three or four days, but he insists on a week or so or even longer.
My father accidentally found that applying burning chicken feathers to the wound can effectively prevent the skin from festering. So my father used chicken feathers dried after boiling water as a good medicine to treat minor injuries.
I often see him squatting on the ground, lighting a chicken feather with a lighter, and then crushing the burnt ash with two fingers and rubbing it into the wound. After that, the wound on my father's hand turned into a black spot, big and small, firmly sticking to the skin until the wound healed.
05
Father has great affection for chicken feathers, not only because of his own personal experience, but also because of the healing process of his sister's face after being burned.
That year, my two-year-old sister was not as tall as a desk. My sister came back from school outside and picked up a grass-green plastic kettle for her.
The water on the briquette stove was boiled, and my sister didn't think too much, so she put the boiled water into a clean kettle, put the kettle on the desk, and told my sister and I to wait until the water cooled before moving, and then turned to do our homework.
My sister was curious about the kettle, and so was I. The only difference was that I knew the hot water was very hot, and my sister wouldn't let us touch it, so I went to play with curiosity.
My sister did her homework too carefully, and didn't notice that her sister, who was not as high as the desk, had slowly walked to the desk, and was standing on tiptoe, trying to reach the kettle without a lid.
When the little girl put her hand on the kettle, it was the moment when the plastic container filled with boiling water fell. Suddenly, hot water poured on her sister's face.
The cry went through the roof and reached his father's ears. My sister who is doing her homework is scared out of her wits. She realized that her sister was crying only because she was scalded by hot water. She immediately picked up the rag on the table to wipe her sister's burnt face.
This wipe doesn't matter, a layer of skin has been wiped off my face, and my sister's crying suddenly became shrill.
The father who arrived in time, in a rage, lifted a piece of wood with a thick bowl. When my sister saw that the situation was not good, she started to run. Her irrational father chased after her and threw the wood in the direction where her sister ran. After catching up with her shadow, the wood fell to the ground and turned over four or five times before stopping. My father stumbled to the ground because of his unstable feet.
Before my sister's crying stopped, my father stumbled up to check the injury of his little daughter. There is no doubt that the situation got worse after he wiped his face with a rag.
My father's carpentry has been put aside since my sister's face was burned. He takes my sister to the doctor every day, and every time he comes back, he frowns and sighs.
My sister is very sensible. Please don't blame her. She said that her face was burned because she was too naughty, not her fault at all. Every time I hear this, my father is more heartbroken.
The atmosphere at home was gloomy for several days. That day, dad came back with his sister, and his mood seemed much better. He asked his mother to find some clean chicken feathers to cook, while he squatted on the briquette stove and cooked sesame oil carefully.
It turned out that my father met a retired old doctor outside, and the old man told him a folk prescription to ensure that my sister's face would not be scarred. The most important medicine was chicken feathers.
After that, my father dipped clean chicken feathers in sesame oil every day and brushed them on my sister's burnt face. Gradually, gradually, the wound slowly recovered until there was no scar left.
At this point, my sister and father finally got out of the cage of self-blame and resentment.
06
In my father's eyes, a little chicken feather is not useless, it is simply a cure. Therefore, there is always a clean chicken feather hidden in my cupboard.
I don't know pharmacology, and I don't know the principle of the folk prescription prescribed by the old doctor for my father. In a word, my father's scalded chicken feather wound is no longer festering and suppurating, and my sister's scalded face has not left a scar.
Chicken feathers are really like what dad said, they are treasures! And I pay more attention to my father's words.
I often feel like a useless person now, but when I see a little chicken feather flying in the sky, I feel relieved at once.
Brief introduction of the author
ID:xueloqingsi, WeChat name: yjzh0508 (Zhao Linger).
A special education teacher, a kindergarten teacher, likes to write and draw. A writer who tries to recognize the direction, find himself and realize himself. Writing, I've been on the road.
The community is more civilized in July.