I once asked my mother, can I not get married?
She said, if there are fireworks everywhere, the smell of food is everywhere in the neighborhood, and there are couples on the street, you can just hold back your tears.
I once asked him, can we go back to the past?
He didn't speak.
Maybe, my mother had wondered why I didn't want to get married; maybe, he didn't want to go back to the past at all; maybe in the end, I just hadn't figured out how to face all the established realities.