Flowing River of Time
47 . I have to let down my parents

Zhuang Yu

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I hid my true thoughts of leaving this humble and poor family in the bottom of my heart. I found another reason to ask my parents to stay in Zhoutian to study in middle school alone and not move away with the family. This was something my parents did not expect. My mother did not want me to stay alone. Although I was already thirteen years old, if I really wanted to stay alone, my mother would still be worried. However, the reason why my mother did not want me to stay was that she cared more about me staying. Father had to send a portion of his salary of dozens of yuan to me as living expenses. This would make the family's already tight life even more difficult. She thought it would be easier to take care of the family together. I made up my mind not to follow my family. I told my mother that even if I moved to a new place, I couldn't go to middle school at my doorstep. I had to go to middle school elsewhere. This reason was valid at that time and later, and it was also the right choice.

Since it was reasonable for me to stay, why couldn't my brother stay? Mother asked my brother if he was willing to stay with me and wait for us to move to the place we wanted to go before contacting the local middle school to transfer us back to study. Although brother didn't directly ask to stay, I can guess that brother is also willing to leave his humble family. Therefore, when mother asked for his opinion, he agreed to continue to study in Zhoutian with me.

Mother found Zhi's mother and asked her to tell the person in charge of the garrison to allow me and my brother to move to the new building of the mining department (the row of houses where my family lived had been allocated to the middle school). Zhi's mother saw that Mother came to ask her for help, so she didn't make things difficult for Mother. She directly led Mother to look after an empty room and let my brother and I move in. Mother thanked Zhi's mother profusely and said a lot of good things. She also asked Zhi's mother to take care of us two brothers in the future. Zhi's mother agreed one by one. Mother also asked the left-behind office to help me and my brother's household registration to be separated from the family and stay in the local area, not moving away with the family. In this way, my brother and I will really have to leave home. We will have to leave our parents and live independently.

There were two cars. One of them was filled with my family's tattered cars, and the other was filled with Old Xie's tattered cars. The two families had been in the same mine for a few years, but they were not familiar with each other. Dad was a blacksmith in the mechanical and electrical workshop, and Old Xie was a blacksmith in the mining field. The two of them did not work in the same place. Old Xie's blacksmith furnace was located halfway up the mountain in the mining field. It was specially used to repair the steel drill (quenching) for the cannon hole. At this time, because the two families had the same fate, the two families had a relationship. Old Xie's family also had five children. The eldest son was the same age as his brother and was in the sixth grade of primary school. Perhaps it was because he went to school a little late. In detail, the other situations of the two families were very similar. They were both poor, bitter, and looked down upon by others. They were both rejected by the tungsten mine and were sent to the northernmost part of the province.

In order to make it easier to move, his father found some old wooden trunks from the mine and nailed them into a few big boxes, putting all the messy sundries into them. There was still some firewood that had not been sold out at home, so they were all loaded into the car and taken away. The driver told his father that he did not want any firewood, but his father ignored them and still loaded the firewood into the car. The car was about to start, and mother repeatedly reminded brother to take good care of me and not let me fall ill often. I couldn't explain my feelings at that time. I just watched the car start and slowly leave. Finally, I turned onto the main road and walked far away. I saw my mother waving and shouting something in the car. I couldn't help but choke. What's wrong with me? Isn't this the result I want? Didn't she always yearn to get rid of this family that made her feel inferior? Didn't he achieve his goal today? Why couldn't he give up? I couldn't be happy. My conscience made me feel sad for my parents. My brother and I could have helped them share some of the burden of life, but we left them when they needed us. We didn't know where they went with their three young siblings. It was impossible for my parents not to understand my brother and I's thoughts of leaving home. It was just that they had no choice but to accept this situation. Perhaps this was the law of nature. They did not expect their children to give them anything in return. Everything had to be borne by them. My conscience seemed to be criticized by heaven and earth, but I wouldn't turn back because of my uneasy conscience. I had lived enough of my humble days and had suffered enough of the harm caused by my low self-esteem due to depression. I needed to use this opportunity to end the " inferiority " that had been covering my head for the past few years.

The car drove the two families to the courtyard of an empty warehouse designated by the Commerce Bureau of Xun City. Someone told dad and Lao Xie that they would stay here temporarily. They were negotiating with their subordinate receiving unit. As a result, the two families could only treat the warehouse as their own home. Coincidentally, they had brought firewood here. Mom then cooked for them. Unexpectedly, they stayed there for 1 month. When the firewood was almost finished, they finally got a result. They then drove the two families to the courtyard of the warehouse of the commercial bureau in a small county town 200 miles away by car. The two families stayed here for another half a month. In the end, his father was first assigned to the cotton ginning factory in the riverside town. After another half a month, Old Xie's family went to the cotton ginning factory in the mountain town. Our family was able to split up first. It was the county business bureau who saw that my parents had three children, while Old Xie's family had five children. The cotton ginning factory in the riverside town chose my house first.(In comparison, the riverside town is more convenient than the mountain town. There are river boats and transportation, and it's not as blocked as the mountain town.) At this time, my parents were very glad that my brother and I did not follow them. Otherwise, it would be difficult to say which family entered the mountain. This move delayed third brother's classes for an entire semester. If my brother and I followed, we would also miss a semester. Furthermore, during our stay in the county, Mother also found out that the local county's middle school did not accept students who transferred from other places. It was also impossible for Brother and I to study in that county's middle school. At this moment, Mother also felt that it was the right move for Brother and I to stay in Zhou Tian's middle school. During the winter break, when I returned to that small town and listened to my mother talk about these things, the guilt I felt towards my parents lessened a little.

The new building of the copper mine was the only non-production building that was not transferred to the middle school. The Zhiquan family also moved to the new building. The original copper mine courtyard became the office of the middle school and the teachers. Because the courtyard was very close to the building, some students came to the room where my brother and I lived to play.(The copper mine was built in the earliest period. It was low and small in size.) For the two of us to live in a room (the new building's room was large), in the eyes of those students who lived in the dormitory, it was simply enjoying the treatment of senior officials. Therefore, whenever they were free, some students would come to our room to play. At this moment, I was so happy. I didn't expect that I would have something that my classmates envied. This was impossible in the past. Before we moved out, the room that our family of seven lived in wasn't as big as this one. Now, the two of us brothers could live in such a big house. It really felt like we had turned over a new leaf. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that this step was right (but I couldn't help but feel guilty towards my parents).

On this day, when some students came to play again, the group suddenly said,"There seems to be a smell in this room. I smelled it the last few times I came." A few students began to sniff around. Some said they smelled it, while others said they didn't. I asked the group what they smelled, and he said it was the smell of something rotten. I understood immediately. There was a scrap picking bag under the bed. There were some pig bones in the bag that had not been sent to the acquisition station. The smell must have come from the bag. Scavenging made my sense of smell unable to detect these smells. Qun's mother was a doctor and her family was very particular about hygiene. Qun was naturally very sensitive to odors. I was afraid to let the new students know that my brother and I made a living by picking up scraps (the group probably didn't know either, because we hadn't met the group before). If the new students knew about this, we would be looked down upon as poor and lowly in their eyes. I said that there might be a dead mouse behind the window, so I avoided the question. After that, I stopped inviting my classmates to our room. As we grew older and our vanity grew stronger, my brother and I gave up on scrap picking to avoid bringing trouble to our classmates. If dad was still here, we would never dare to give up on scrap picking. Dad never regarded scrap picking as a lowly thing. He always said,"We don't steal or rob. We rely on labor to make a living. What's so embarrassing about that?" Dad was right, but how many people in this society didn't look down on scrap pickers? Wasn't it the same for those who had become rich from the poor? Scavenging could have allowed my brother and I to increase our living allowance so that our lives wouldn't be as difficult as they were later on. However, in order not to cause discrimination because of scrap picking, we brothers could only pretend that we were no longer poor.

This book is provided by FunNovel Novel Book | Fan Fiction Novel [Beautiful Free Novel Book]

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