Collection of Locust Leaves Chapter 004 The Invisible Heart

Text/Zhao Tong

I have a habit of sitting there for a long time after dinner every day Chatted with my wife for a while at the table. The content of the chat is not fixed. Sometimes it’s about fun things about kids, sometimes it’s about hard things about work. I forgot the specific content of the chat that night. In short, it must have been a very tricky thing, and I seemed to feel like I couldn't finish it. At this time, my wife said something like this: "When your eyes are worried, your hands are not worried."

No need to worry about your eyes or your hands!

This sentence is not unfamiliar to me, and it is not the first time that my wife has mentioned it. This saying comes from my mother-in-law, who lived in the countryside when she was young. I have no experience of rural life, so I can only use my imagination to reconstruct the scene at that time. It must have been a scorching summer, and the yellow earth under the sun was dry and cracked. What my mother-in-law was facing was a cornfield. There was no green left in the cornfield, and all that was left was yellow. I remember that Van Gogh had an oil painting. I forgot which one it was. I just remember that it was a patch of yellow and orange. That was probably the color of the cornfield at that time. The mother-in-law looked at the endless land like the sea and wondered how long it would take her to finish the work, so she blurted out this sentence, "If your eyes are worried, your hands will not be worried", and then continued to cut down the straw.

Hmm! When the eyes are worried, the hands are not worried. This sentence was repeated in my mouth again, and with just these five words I understood everything my wife wanted to express to me. No matter how difficult the task is, it will be done eventually if you have a steady hand. It was this "famous saying" from my mother-in-law that suddenly reminded me of something.

Almost all the people around me have a "famous saying" that is similar to a mantra. They are neither Lu Xun nor any other people. But the words that come out of their mouths are all great philosophy if you taste them carefully.

Here are a few examples. When I was in high school, I had a very silly friend who had no brains but was very honest. At first, I thought he would be a bachelor all his life, with no future, let alone any responsibilities. But my idea was broken by him within one year. In that year, he instantly completed three things in his life: getting married, having children, and finding a job. However, these three things took me ten years to gradually complete. stage completed. This incident reminds me of a "famous quote" he left to me when I was in high school: Although the camel is stupid, you must always look up at it.

Another example, he is also my high school classmate. Different from the previous example, he is the kind of person I hate, but I do not deny that he is also very helpful to my life. That year I was going to take the college entrance examination, but I took it a year late because I went abroad. I was an art major, and the professional exams were drawing, gouache, and sketching. I haven't touched a paintbrush for a year, and I don't know if I can perform normally, so I found this old classmate of mine. He gave me a secret that is "shameless". The original words are as follows: If you can do these two shameless things, you will win. You should be shameless when you draw. If you are afraid of people seeing you, you will not be able to draw well. If you are not good at drawing, then you will take the test. Not going to college; another shamelessness is that you should be shameless when chasing girls, otherwise you will regret it for the rest of your life.

This first one is shameless, but I tried it during the professional course exam. I painted as if no one else was around. I passed the exam easily and was admitted to an art school. His famous saying about "shameless" has been deeply remembered by me to this day.

That classmate is even more interesting. When I attended the class reunion again more than ten years ago, his face changed the least among us. It's not that he took good care of himself. He became like this when he graduated from high school. People who don't know us well see us together and think I'm standing with a 40-year-old man.

His mature appearance made it difficult for this classmate to find a partner in his twenties. At one time, we thought he would never get a girlfriend because the only way he could make friends was through blind dates. . Going to Central Park for blind dates every week is as punctual as going to work. Because he implemented the second motto of "shameless", he succeeded!

Whether it is "Although the camel is stupid, you have to look up at it", or "You must insist on two shamelessness in life". Of course there are more, so I won’t give examples due to space limitations. These philosophical and profound words come from ordinary people around me.

This reminds me of those old people and old things about Anli...

It reminds me of my grandma.

That year, my grandfather and I dug a lot of soil from the Haihe River, built flower beds and planted a lot of jasmine grass. Grass jasmine is planted in spring and will bloom in summer and autumn. In winter, it can be cultivated into old woody roots indoors. If the cultivation is successful, it can sprout in the second year. It was through grass jasmine that I learned about plant hybridization. After several generations of reproduction, the flowers on my ground not only had different colors, but also exuded strange fragrances. Whenever I see these "scientific research results" of mine, I can't help but put my nose up to smell them.

As soon as the stamens touch the nose, grandma will remind her not to smell them. Then there are two famous sayings, "People have three taboos: smelling flowers, sucking marrow, and leaning on railings." Another line is "The road is open to rain on sunny days, but be careful when it rains."

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Let me explain the first sentence first. Smelling flowers can easily cause allergies in the upper respiratory tract; sucking marrow means eating ribs by sucking the marrow with your mouth, which can easily inhale broken bone residue into the lungs; It goes without saying about the railing. If the railing is not strong, you can just climb down. It feels a bit like advising a gentleman not to face danger. The other sentence "On a sunny day, the road will open to rain..." is even more expressive! To be clear means to be prepared for everything in advance and to be prepared for danger in times of crisis.

Apart from these two sentences, I always had the impression that my grandma was a very ordinary old lady until she died of lung cancer. I thought so too that day.

However, my mind changed at this moment.

Grandma, I said she was beautiful when I was young. She really looked like the person who hosted the news on TV. At least when I was young, I was innocent and wouldn't lie. But the marriage of such a beautiful grandma was not good because she was said to be infertile. I think it’s because the medical treatment at that time was not as advanced as it is now, right? Otherwise, she would have had her own biological children. If history goes like that, then the paradox will appear again. Will I still have this experience now? Can I write a novel or essay?

Grandma had two husbands and one adopted son in her life. The adopted son was my father, and the second husband pushed me to the sea in a four-wheeled stroller. Grandpa playing in the building by the river. Looking back on grandma’s experience now, she probably wouldn’t have gone through even a small part of her life easily. However, she was indeed ordinary in my eyes at the time, and now I know. The reason why I thought she was ordinary when I was a child was that I couldn't see through her outer shell and see her heart. Now I try to find time to write things every day, just to talk about their hearts. , as I write, I will understand it myself.

The timid grandpa, the gossipy grandma, the grumpy father...

They are definitely not simple on the surface. What are they like on the inside?

Other works: "My Grandpa", "Neihai Liangzi", "Collection of Locust Leaves", "Zhao Tong's Paintings", "Occasional Happiness in Life"