My favorite prose in the old house

"The old house has been sold." Father's calm voice came from the other end of the phone. Although I had expected it, I was still a little uncomfortable to hear the exact news that the old house was sold.

This old house is really old. It has been there since grandpa's father. The old house faces the road from east to west, with a low mountain behind it. It takes half an hour to drive from the county seat and take Panshan Highway.

After careful calculation, the old house has been unoccupied for more than ten years. The old house has been empty since the old lady died. In the past ten years, the old house has weathered the ups and downs alone. When I go back to my hometown once a year, I can see that the old house is a little decadent: the door locks are rusty, the walls are peeling off, the external walls are covered with various rural advertisements, and the tiles on the roof are broken. If I go near the back room, I can see a huge skylight, which leaks brilliant white light. The only remaining furniture is covered with a thick layer of ash, and many furniture brackets are scattered all over the floor. The weeds outside the side door have grown to half a person's height Everything that is broken tells us that life here was a long time ago.

Compared with my parents, the old house actually means little to me. Those days that were close to the old house were in my childhood, and many of them were forgotten when I was still ignorant. But after all, I spend the Spring Festival in my old house every year, and I know it very well. I remember my favorite thing when I was a child was to go back to my hometown for the New Year. On the twentieth day of the twelfth lunar month, the family began to buy some new year's goods in the city, prepare some fireworks for the children on New Year's Eve, and then put the prepared things in large and small paper boxes. After cleaning up, they went back to their hometown by bus.

There is no TV in the old house. Before I returned to the city for the Spring Festival, I had never seen the Spring Festival Gala, so every year when many people get together to watch the Spring Festival Gala after the reunion dinner as a necessary ceremony for the Spring Festival, I don't care.

Although there is no TV and Spring Festival Gala, it doesn't mean that it is boring to spend the New Year in my hometown in the mountains. On the contrary, what I can recall now is the warmth between my family. At noon on New Year's Eve, the family had a reunion dinner amid deafening firecrackers, and they were also deskmates at night. After dinner, the women in the family went to the kitchen to clean up, and the men began to sit around the bonfire burning firewood and start talking. Women who don't have to clean the kitchen utensils will also join in the chat. The content of the chat is probably how much money they earned this year, what lucky things they met, and so on. Of course, this kind of dialogue is meaningless to children. At this time, fireworks bought in the city have become the best thing for children to kill boredom. Because I was the only child at home at that time, I always called a boy one or two years younger than me to play next to the old house. Sometimes, dad who doesn't want to chat will join our fireworks game, help us make a fire, or help us set it up. By the campfire, there are often several red scorpions, large and small, buried in the ashes left by the burning of firewood. Adults are talking about something, sweet potatoes are ripe, one by one.

The flame chug jump, small room, full of laughter, adults' faces, I do not know because of the content of the conversation, or because of the temperature of the stove and a red tide. Seeing that the fire was gradually extinguished, grandpa stopped adding firewood, and everyone spread out to sleep, waiting for the arrival of the first day, waiting for a rare visit to relatives and friends in a year.

As far as I can remember, several rooms in the old house were particularly dark, especially the one where the old lady lived. She always has to turn left and right in the room to get there. That kind of black, in retrospect, is really opaque black that scared me when I was a child, and the room with incandescent lamps often emits dim and old light because of the low wattage of the bulbs.

From the side door of the old house is the dining room. I only remember that there is a cellar under the ground of the canteen, which stores a large number of crops such as sweet potatoes and radishes, just like the homes of many ordinary farmers, but I have never been there, and my impression of this pit is limited to knowing its existence. ...

If the old man were still here, we would probably go back to our old house for the New Year every year, just like when we were young, but there was nothing we could do. Since the old lady was taken from her hometown to the city, grandpa's home has become the "base" for the Spring Festival every year, and the scene of everyone sitting around the fire and talking eagerly is gone forever. The old house only hurried back to worship the old man on New Year's Eve. Sometimes grandpa will open the door when he goes back to see what's going on inside, but now he has to forget it completely.

Dad and several other dads also discussed whether the old house should be sold. If a small house is built on the basis of the old house, there is no need to sell it to others, but no one wants to build a small house in a mountain nest dozens of minutes' drive from the city, even if there are mountains, greenery, water and fresh air here. Everyone has memories of living in an old house, but for realistic people, the existence of an old house has lost any need for living and the value of immediate economic benefits. I once said to my father, can I keep the old house? I can build a house here when I earn money. Father said, when will that wait? Yes, when? Maybe parents can wait until that day, but I'm afraid the old house that is declining day by day can't wait any longer.

Every New Year, I always insist on going back to my hometown with my grandparents and dad to pay homage to my dead relatives. Actually, you don't have to go many times. I haven't seen some relatives. Their graves are hidden in bushes and thorns in the deep mountains. Grandpa has always refused to come with us. But I don't know why, every year, I still want to go back to my hometown to see my old house, as if it were Chinese New Year. Although the house looks like a ruin, I won't go in even if I go back.

I always feel that it is very happy and proud that a person is wandering in the society but has a continuous and stable dependence. Although I live with my parents, I also have a home. But that old house in the mountains seems to me to be the foundation that really makes my heart belong. Wherever I go, I remember where my hometown is, because my old lady, my grandfather and my father live in the house there, and now, it will no longer exist. I remember that Tujia people in Ye Fu once wrote in Where is my hometown: "Urbanization and immigration have shortened the memory of countless people. They are people who don't need to find their way home. For many people, hometown is a foot wrap that must be thrown away. It seems that if they don't forget this, it will be difficult for them to fly higher and go further. "

People can't forget their roots, but knowing where their roots are is like having a support and the power to exist all their lives. I don't know what it's like to see a new house built on the original site of an old house that doesn't belong to us. Father also said that the old house was sold and we could build another one at the foot of the opposite mountain. But I think that old houses can be demolished, sold and rebuilt, but the memory and protection of a source of life will never be destroyed so easily.