Nostalgia, You Are the Softest Flower in My Heart
Home is the deepest imprinted landscape in my heart, a mountain and water painting. Nostalgia is the most delicate flower blooming within it.
Time has passed through a hundred years of ancient history, flowing across the countryside's every piece of land. On the land, countless white, yellow, red, and other vibrant flowers blossomed, while my nostalgia is the simplest and most tender of all – the softest flower in my heart.
Home carries the indelible image of my mother's tireless efforts. My mother is my lifelong companion, a flower that never fades. She is beautiful. I remember her youthful appearance: her long, black hair pulled back, and her gentle, water-like eyes seemed to allow a child to understand the unique kindness of a woman in the countryside.
My mother is like a wildflower growing beside the riverbank – beautiful and charming. Her eyes were bright and sparkling, and her teeth were white. My father was like a small river winding around the wildflowers, flowing gently, a soft, clear voice that whispered to my mother. The water nourished the flowers, and the flowers kissed the dew from the spring rain, spreading the pollen of love. Year after year, many flowers bloomed alongside the wildflowers.
My mother is a flower blooming on fertile soil. Mother, in every season, she dedicates herself to this land she loves. Spring ploughing, summer irrigation, autumn harvest, and winter storage – every step is inseparable from my mother's skilled hands. She spent her entire life nurturing our children and dedicating her most beautiful years to our family.
Those worn leather shoes, those patched-up clothes, that soft quilt, that bowl of sour pickle rice porridge, the sickle that scarred my mother's strong hands, the wooden barrel carrying over a hundred kilograms of river water, the two-story, simple house built from cow dung, the beautifully painted picture windows cut from paper with scissors, the embroidered flower patterns on the Jiangnan brocade – all these things are what I can never forget.
Nostalgia is interwoven with every drop and every flower and every piece of wood of my hometown. When I left home as a young man, I studied and worked in the city to eventually change our hometown's impoverished and backward appearance. However, I never realized that this journey would be my entire life; and this journey would consume my youth in this city, which is now both familiar and strange to me. The city's development is so fast that I can no longer distinguish all the complex routes.
Nostalgia, why do you often torment me? My parents' passing has broken my heart. Every Qingming Festival, I return to the hometown that no longer has rivers, grass, or flowers, kneeling before my grandparents' graves, weeping bitterly. I shout 'Mama' and 'Baba,' tears streaming down my face, as if I could see my father smoking a water pipe alone, and my mother tying my hair with a red ribbon.
Nostalgia, why do you often embody my hopes? When I worry about my children's future, I see my mother using the eggs she earned from selling a pig to sincerely give to my teacher, hoping he would take good care of me. Mother, you are so good; how can I not use this to educate my children? When my children are sick and shout at me, how can I not feel aggrieved? I only remember my dear, deceased grandmother, who is now my most beloved and dearest person in the world – my mother, who dedicated her entire life to me.
Nostalgia, you will always be the most beautiful landscape I can never forget; you are always my most tender longing for my family; you will always be the softest flower in my heart.
