Ever since my grandfather sank into the loess, my pen has been rusty. For four years, I practiced a cowardly skill: how not to miss. I'm afraid that once the floodgates of memory are opened, guilt will take precedence over warmth. As a result, his figure, year after year of alienation, helplessly faded and became thinner, dissipating like morning mist.
What I can hold now are only a few hard, glowing fragments of memory.
In one fragment, there was his smile lying on the old wooden window frame in the kitchen. The sunlight passed through the window pane, dividing his dark face into a staggered print of light and dark - it was the color of the land, with ravines and ravines, and every wrinkle was embedded with wind, frost and sunlight. But when he looked at me playing on the kang, the stars in his eyes were always gentle and bright.
Another fragment shows his back sitting in the yard. From morning light to sunset, it is as silent as a mountain. That kind of silence is not blank, but the final reconciliation between a man and a piece of land; he spent eighty years living his life into a miniature landform of the loess plateau.
I understand it all, the richness in his silence, the epicness in his wrinkles.
But understanding does not mean forgiveness - absence when one should be present in life is a debt that can never be written off.
Therefore, the pen I mentioned today is dipped in double ink.
One, to fight against the ultimate thief of time. Before the memory is completely weathered, we must capture the toughest and gentlest layer that belongs to him and to our people. Second, to complete a belated direct look.
