"Dad, if you don't stay with me, I will grow up."
My son's unintentional words on the phone were like a sharp knife that instantly pierced through all the travel and persistence I had spent in the mountains and cities of Guizhou over the past twelve years.
I once thought that the most real love for a Guizhou man was to go out of the mountains and work hard to make money so that his wife and children who stayed in his hometown in southeastern Guizhou could live a good life. I climbed over the scaffolding at the highest construction site in Guiyang and got drunk at the wine table in Zunyi, just to convert my sweat into money and send it back to the faraway place called home. I was absent when my son learned to walk for the first time by the Qingshui River, performed for the first time at the Lusheng Festival in Qianhu Miao Village, and waited for my birthday countless times in front of the stilted building in the hazy rain and fog... I always used "next time" and "Dad is busy" to deal with it, and used more and more transfer records to fill the gaps in my heart. I thought I built them a golden nest to shelter them from the wind and rain, but when I looked back, I found that what my family needed most was not money, but me.
When I finally quit my job in Guiyang and returned to that familiar yet unfamiliar small town in Guizhou, I faced the alienation of my son who speaks Miao more fluently than Chinese, the silence of my wife whose edges have been smoothed by time, and a child who almost called me "uncle". Learning to be a father from scratch is more difficult than paving the way in the mountains of Guizhou.
This is a story about repentance and redemption that takes place in the mountains and rivers of Guizhou. I am like a silent mountain. I missed your entire childhood, but I will never be absent from your future.
