Stand Still, Don't Waver

On the day he was imprisoned for his brother's crime, his son was just one month old. On the day I was released from prison, Nian An was taking the final exam. I stood at the prison door for a long time, and the only person who came to pick me up was Xiao Wan. She lost a lot of weight, glanced at me and said, "Mom passed away two years ago." I didn't say anything. Eighteen years. I spent eighteen years in prison for others, missing the last moment of my mother and my son's entire childhood. The son's name is Lin Nian'an. I called him for the first time when he was ten years old. He asked me on the phone: "Why don't you change jobs? Can't you afford the penalty or don't want to come back?" I didn't know how to answer. He wrote a letter during the summer vacation of fifth grade and wrote under the painting: "Dad, when you come back next time, stand still and I will draw another one." Later, he painted that painting for many years, and the faces in the painting were always blurry. He said the teacher said his paintings looked like aliens. When he asked me "you promise", I lied to him once. When he said, "It sounds very reassuring," I cried so hard on the other end of the phone that I didn't dare to speak out. Then when he grew up, he searched for "Tanzania", and he knew that "Africa" ​​was false, and he stopped answering my calls. It took twelve years for a person to go from blurry to clear. He stood still in the wind. He could finally stand. When the door was closed, the jujube tree was still there. He's still there. Nian An is also there. We didn't get anything, but those things that we should really live well in our lives are finally all there.