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The National Day of 1966 was said to be particularly significant, with processions of all kinds spreading across the sky. Our school’s procession waited in the Dongdan area, and all of us sat on the ground. All the female students wore beautiful flower dresses as required, and there was a flurry of flowers. Suddenly, a student nudged me quietly and said.

“Look, look!”

I looked up and saw a woman, somehow walking into our group, standing not far from me, looking at me with a smile.

Her hair was a bit disheveled by the wind, a blue pants and coat, a medium-tall figure, about forty years old. She did not look at others, staring at me alone, and murmured, while looking and laughing, while laughing, may have been standing here for a while, and kept nodding her head. I was a little puzzled, what’s wrong with this person, why is always staring at me?

I couldn’t help but look at her too, and suddenly, a thought flashed wildly in the depths of my heart: “Is it mommy? It’s mom! That smile, those eyes, it’s mom looking at me!”

It was my mother’s smile, containing encouragement and approval.

It was when I was in elementary school and my mom took me to the dentist. It was hard to be drilled by the drill, and many children around me cried and cried, causing the doctors, nurses and Parents to be at a loss. Despite my tears, I didn’t cry at all. It took almost a day, and after the doctor finished giving instructions, my mother suddenly asked.

“Can I give her a popsicle now?”

The doctor paused for a moment, turned his head to look at me, smiled and said.

“Popsicles? Popsicles can be eaten. Be careful not to eat anything hard.”

Walking out the hospital door, my mom bought me an ice. She has always believed that snacking interferes with normal eating, and never moved as we begged. Especially this Time the small hole in the tooth, she said is eating sweet things to eat bad. But today she actually broke her own ban and rewarded me by watching me eat a popsicle with a smile. The affirmation and praise contained in that smile, like sunshine, always warmed my heart.

And that look, that look in my mom’s eyes, heartfelt and full of apologies.

It was a Sunday when my mom took us to the park. When we arrived at the park, my siblings ran away and my mom sat on a bench in the shade and called me to her side to talk. She was wearing a lavender dress with lace, which was very nice. I sat on the chair and looked around, mumbling “ums and ahs”, eager to go play. After talking for a while, my mother suddenly asked me.

“Does your foot still hurt?”

I was flabbergasted and didn’t understand: what does it hurt?

When I turned my head, I collided with an apologetic look in my mother’s gaze, and once again I was stumped. She leaned down and touched my left ankle bone and said.

“Let me see, it’s hit here, does it still hurt?”

I just remembered that several days ago, for something, my mother said about me. I was stubborn and pissed her off, and she was holding a brush to brush her clothes, so she threw it toward the ground and it bounced up and hit me on my ankle. I knelt down and cried, holding my foot. Mom walked out without a word, ignoring me.

I forgot all about it after I cried, and when I brought it up, I couldn’t even remember which foot I had hit, so I said hesitantly.

“It was the right foot, right?”

“It was the left foot, I saw it, I was on your left that day.” Mom said with certainty, while still touching my left ankle and asking.

“Does it still hurt?”

I thought about it, yes, it was my left foot, raised my head and looked at her and said.

“It doesn’t hurt, it didn’t hurt at all!”

Looking at me, my mom smiled and said.

“Okay, you go play ……, do not run too fast!”

I agreed while standing up and ran to the depths of the flower shadows to find my siblings to play. The mother’s loving and apologetic gaze warmly shone on my back.

As I was thinking about this, there was a sudden commotion around us, and we were told to stand up and move forward. We bustled forward for a while and then stopped to wait, I sat in the line, distracted.

Soon, I saw her again! A blue pants coat, standing two rows apart, the sun shining on her face, she smiled, still looking only at me, and muttering something under her breath. She aroused the amazement of her classmates, and the one next to her asked me.

“Why does she keep looking at you?”

I didn’t know how to answer, and I couldn’t be bothered to answer, but I just stared at the woman, at her smiling face and her murmuring lips.

What was she saying? What is she saying? Was she telling about the time she took students to work in the countryside?

My mother was a middle school teacher, and in the summer of 1965 she took her students to the countryside to work. I walked my mother to school, and just a few steps after getting off the bus I ran into a group of students, and immediately someone came up and took the small box I was carrying and the net bag my mother was holding and said enthusiastically, “Teacher, let me take your things first.”

When she returned from her work, she brought back several mimeographed tabloids from the school, one of which praised her for mending her students’ scratched clothes overnight while taking them to the countryside, with the headline “A good teacher who loves her students” and an illustration of a teacher mending her clothes under a lamp.

Mom put the newspaper on the table without saying anything. I saw the message and took the paper to her and asked her about it. She smiled and told me that a student’s clothes had been torn during labor, and since they were all boys and no one knew how to mend them (the school where my mother teaches is a boys’ school) and she only had one piece with her, she rushed to mend it and said she didn’t expect the student to remember such a small thing. But I could see that she was very relieved and a little embarrassed to be praised.

Perhaps, she was talking about the promise that could never be fulfilled?

When I was in high school, my mother gave me a red cardboard diary with an inscription that encouraged me to study hard and keep striving for progress. The insert of the diary was a staged photo of the large song and dance “The East is Red”, which had been staged recently. My mother flipped through the pages, pointing out to me how good the costumes looked and how well the actor sang ……, and finally said with longing.

“I heard this dance drama is particularly good, I will definitely take you to see it later!”

Mom never got to take us to see it, and her words will always remain in my memory with joy and longing.

On September 8, shortly after the start of the Cultural Revolution, my mother was killed by one of her students. (I hope it wasn’t the student she was mending. She was 42 years old that year and informed us that she had “committed suicide”. My father was already locked up in the “cow shed” and could not go Home, so the only adults in the house were my grandmother and us four sisters and brothers, none of whom cried. No one ordered us not to cry, but at that time, it was forbidden to cry when a Family member was killed, and even my sister, who was just in elementary school, knew that.

It has been almost a month since my mother left. Her words, her voice, her movements, her smile, suddenly disappeared from our lives without a trace. And today, this tall woman with somewhat disheveled hair suddenly appeared in front of me, in a blue pantsuit, about the same age as Mom. She kept betting her gaze, her smile, and her murmured whispers all on me alone, who was she? Who the hell is she? It’s mom, she’s mom!

When the parade finally began, I walked in the procession, feeling only wooden and drowsy. I knew that in order to make a big show, all students and teachers were required to participate in this year’s parade, otherwise, more than half of the students would be excluded because of their “bad background”, and I was certainly among the excluded.

I took my siblings to the entrance of the alley to watch the fireworks that night as usual. That year’s fireworks were particularly red and bloomed in the sky far above. Every time the fireworks rose, the crowd around us rose to cheer, and in previous years my siblings and I did the same, but this year the four of us were huddled together, their small figures leaning against me, and we watched quietly, without a sound, the fireworks were unbearably bleak.

It was not until November 1978 that my mother, who had been dead for twelve years, was finally rehabilitated.

It had been thirty-eight years since my mother left us, and this year was her eightieth birthday. I can’t imagine what my mother would have looked like at the age of 80. Over the years, whenever I think of her, I think of that woman in the 1966 parade, with her messy hair and blue pants and coat. -Oh, and that little jacket. It was more than a year after Mom’s death when the school sent back her belongings, and among the pitiful pile of stuff, there was a pick-up list. One of my father’s suits was too small, so my mother took it and had it altered into a small jacket for women, just before the terrible storm. When I went to pick up the clothes, they were still there. The shopkeeper didn’t ask or say anything, but brought the clothes and wrapped them up and handed them to me. The small jacket was nicely altered, like new. The style was chosen by mom herself and the size was carefully measured according to her figure. Mom would look good and beautiful in this dress. She was always staring at me, her smile, her eyes, and the murmur of what she was saying. What was she really saying?

Perhaps, for these thirty-eight years, she has been asking: I am just an ordinary woman, being a mother, loving her children; being a teacher, loving her students. I just want to work hard and live well. What is it that deprives me of this minimal right? What is it, in times of peace, that requires these ordinary human lives as its sacrifice? What is it, and for what, that would take away my Life?

My mother’s daughter, me, is now well past her prime, still feeling young and feeling that there is a long and colorful life ahead of me. But my mother’s life ended at the age of forty-two, and how many other colorful pursuits and aspirations she had in her heart were killed along with her life.

To this day, no one can give an answer.