Chapter 002: Father Xu and Adapting to Local Customs
Lin Yue had no milk, which was a big problem. Aunt Su felt sorry for the two children and helped her think of a solution: "Our brigade still has a few ewes that can produce milk. I'll go back and talk to your uncle about bringing a ewe over to you. You can't let the two kids go hungry. Let's think of a way to see if we can get a few more milk powder tickets."
Lin Yue also knew a lot about this era through the memories of the original owner. There were few births in recent years, and there was no one in the nearby villages who could breastfeed two children. But milk powder tickets were not easy to get, as they were precious.
When she heard Aunt Su say this, she was moved. However, even though no one in the village usually drinks goat milk, if she really brings the goat back, there will inevitably be people who are dissatisfied. She thought for a while and said, "Aunt, I know you are thinking about me. How about this? I pay a little money and rent a ewe. If I tell others about it, it won't be considered that I am taking advantage of the team, and I will feel at ease. Do you think it's okay?"
"Oh, that won't do. Why would I need money just to feed the two kids some goat milk? Besides, this has never happened before. No way, no way, absolutely not!"
Although Aunt Su refused decisively, Lin Yue saw that she was still somewhat reluctant, so he said, "Aunt, you also said that I am a military family member. Yuandong has strict discipline in the army, and I can't hold him back. Besides, this is not a transaction, so it doesn't matter what people in the village say. What do you think?"
Aunt Su sat on the stool, shifting her butt back and forth. After a long pause, she clapped her hands and said, "Okay, I'll go back and discuss this with you. You don't want to take advantage of the team, that's great. I have to let everyone know so that they don't have nothing to do and gossip about me all day long."
After she finished speaking, she couldn't sit still anymore, so she stood up and was about to leave.
Lin Yue forced himself to stand up and send her off.
Aunt Su pushed her back and said, "What's so good about this gift? I'll bring the sheep back to you in a moment!" After that, she left in a hurry.
The two little guys were sleeping soundly at this moment. Lin Yue touched their small hands, and her heart softened. She even had a feeling of being a mother for the first time.
Sure enough, Aunt Su came back soon with three sheep, one big and two small.
The two lambs had just been born and were still inseparable from their ewe, so Aunt Su brought them over together.
In this era, people lack oil and water, and sheep have little fat. It is not as popular as pork, and it is even less valued in rural areas. This ewe doesn't look well cared for, and looks skinny. Lin Yue is really worried that its milk will not be enough for the four little guys.
Aunt Su also knew that this sheep was not very good, but there were not many sheep in the farm, so there was no room for selection.
She taught Lin Yue how to squeeze goat milk and repeatedly reminded him: "The milk for the child must be filtered, cooked, and cooled thoroughly before feeding, otherwise the baby will have diarrhea."
After seeing Aunt Su off, Lin Yue looked around the small house where he was.
After the original body got married, the mother-in-law found an excuse to ask Zhang Yuandong for a lot of money to expand the house. Now there are four main rooms next to the old house, and a utility room for storing firewood. This is considered a respectable family in the village.
As a result, when the family was divided, the original owner was driven out and was not even allowed to live in the storage room.
Sun Hongmei said nicely that she would build a house with a private entrance and courtyard for the old family when the harvest was good. However, the original owner was weak and easily deceived. Whether she believed it or not, she moved out without a word and ended up with no place to stay.
Team leader Zhang Zhiqiang felt sorry for her and let her live in an old warehouse in the village. He also helped her find someone to divide the warehouse into two rooms, inside and outside.
Lin Yue lives in that warehouse now.
The brigade helped her build a kang in the inner room. The room was now bare, with almost nothing in it, except for an old wooden box on the floor and two tattered horse hats woven with ropes.
The outer room was very small. There was a small stove placed on it, so it was almost impossible to turn around. There was also a heavy deep-bottomed earthenware pot on the stove.
A simple yard was built outside the house using branches of a wild jujube tree called "Ji Zi", and a hen was raised in the yard.
The branches were too low, and the hen could fly away with just a flap of her wings.
Outside the yard was a small forest, full of weeds and locust trees. There were a few houses to the east of the forest, and although it was a bit far away, at least there were people living around, so it wasn't too remote.
Before traveling through time, Lin Yue lived in the city since he was a child, and worked hard in the big city after graduation. During the few times he returned to his hometown in the countryside when he was a child, he saw bright brick houses with white walls, red tiles and spacious courtyards.
How could a 21st century girl have ever seen such a low, dilapidated, gray adobe house?
Lin Yue knew that she had traveled through time, but it was not until now, when she saw with her own eyes the environment she was in, that she had a real feeling.
She could no longer live in the new home she had just bought, could no longer see her parents and brother, no longer have to repeat the 9-11-6 routine of working as a social animal, and no longer have snacks, take-out, cell phones, or nightlife.
She stood in the stove, staring out, tears streaming down her face unconsciously, blurring her vision.
A tall figure blocked the light outside the door. Through her tears, Lin Yue saw a familiar figure walking towards her. She thought she must be hallucinating, so she squatted down and burst into tears.
Her behavior frightened the visitor, who hurriedly walked over to her and squatted down. He wanted to pat her on the back but didn't dare. He folded his hands, not knowing how to comfort her. He could only whisper, "Dear girl, don't cry. You just gave birth to a child. Don't cry and hurt your eyes."
When Lin Yue heard the man calling his familiar name, he buried his head deeper, not daring to look up, and his tears flowed even more fiercely.
In her previous life, she had been in a car accident and had been lying in bed for three days, and she was in great pain for three days. At that time, she had already accepted the fact that she was going to die. So after she came here, until just now, her mood was relatively stable, because she felt that every minute she spent now was wasted.
But the appearance of this person finally broke her forced composure and almost made her collapse. Deep in her heart, she was overwhelmed by the longing for her parents and relatives.
Lin Yue had cried enough, so he rolled up his sleeves and wiped his eyes vigorously, then he finally mustered up the courage to look at the person who came.
This man is about 40 years old, with medium-length hair and a grey cotton coat, dressed like a farmer in the village. But his temperament is as majestic as a mountain, he has the elegance of a scholar, but also a bit more stern than a scholar, and he also has the vicissitudes of life.
This man looks almost exactly like his father.
There was no mirror at home, so she didn’t know if the original owner looked like her, but this man was obviously the father she had video chatted with the night before the car accident!
Apart from the sense of having seen life and death, their appearance and temperament are almost exactly the same.
Seeing that Lin Yue was finally willing to look up at him, the man became even more embarrassed. He reached out to wipe Lin Yue's tears, but he didn't dare. He could only say vigorously: "My dear, if you have any grievances, you must tell me, Dad... No, I will help you, I will definitely help you, I will definitely protect you in the future, and I will not let them bully you again..."
Lin Yue wanted to cry again, and blurted out, "Dad!"
The man was obviously very excited, and when he heard the word "Dad", tears began to fall.
The two of them squatted on the ground, their emotions were very excited, and neither of them showed any intention of getting up, until they heard the child crying, then Lin Yue woke up as if from a dream, stood up and hurriedly ran into the house.
She squatted for a long time and stumbled when she stood up. The man helped her up.
The two men went into the inner room one after the other. The man looked at the simple furniture in the room and felt even more upset, and he almost burst into tears again.
Maybe it was because they were twins, but when they cried, they cried together. But they were too thin, so their cries were weak, like the meows of kittens.
Lin Yue touched the quilt and found that her sister had peed. She hurriedly changed her sister's diaper. There were no disposable diapers in those days. They used old sheets cut into pieces and used them as diapers.
Now that there are no conditions, Lin Yue can only adapt to the local customs.
Fortunately, although this type of diaper looks old, it is not actually dirty.
After the establishment of Huaguo, the hospital often organized doctors to go to the countryside to popularize health knowledge, especially the health of pregnant women and newborns. The villagers heard more and more about it, and they knew something about it, and they were not as careless as before.
Midwives would also pay great attention to hygiene during childbirth, fearing that the mother would be blamed by her family if she was not well. Diapers and clothes, which are used close to the baby, would also be ironed in boiling water and then exposed to the sun.
The man was the original owner's biological father, named Xu Enyuan, a famous red capitalist in Lu.
He and his wife had lived a very happy life, but he didn't want to lose his newborn child during the war.
It was not until a few years ago that he found his daughter in this poor little mountain village. However, Lin Yue was afraid that he had a bad background and that others would know that she was the "daughter of a capitalist family", so she was unwilling to recognize him.
In desperation, he could only use his connections to be sent to this remote countryside as an educated youth.
In recent years, the relationship between father and daughter had just eased, but unexpectedly, the family suddenly married their daughter to another village.
Xu Enyuan learned that his daughter was not doing well, and he secretly came to see her several times, but the original owner was afraid that others would know about their relationship, so she was unwilling to get close to him. It was not easy for him to come to Xiaotian Village, and he couldn't even take care of her more.
He was standing aside, watching his daughter clumsily changing the baby's diaper, feeling both sad and relieved.
Lin Yue's heart was also unsettled, and she didn't know if she was deceiving herself. She felt more and more that her relationship with the original owner might be from past lives or present lives, or maybe this was a parallel space. Then this man was really her father, and she was not alone in this world.
Lin Yue was afraid that the child was hungry, so after changing the diaper, she hurried to prepare goat milk.
Xu's father was afraid that she might not be able to cope with the heavy lifting after having just given birth, so he asked her to look after the two children in the house while he went to the kitchen.
Her body was too weak. She had just cried and now she could hardly stand, so she sat down to rest.
Apparently, Mr. Xu was not the kind of person who would do such things. Not long after, a thick cloud of smoke wafted in from the stove. Lin Yue was afraid of suffocating the two children, so he quickly closed the door to the inner room.
She heard Xu's father coughing outside because of being scolded, and then he ran out of the house with a thump.
Lin Yue was not worried. She felt a lot more relaxed and even had the mood to smile secretly.
Father Xu finally finished heating the milk with a dusty face. He brought the milk in and forced an explanation: "Haha, I'm not used to using this clay pot in your house."
Lin Yue laughed secretly, and now nodded seriously, giving Mr. Xu enough face. She took the spoon, slowly cooled it, and fed it to the two children.
Probably because they were too thin, the two children didn’t eat much. In total, they ate less than two spoonfuls of goat’s milk.
Lin Yue had never raised a child, so she didn't know what was going on. She couldn't go to the hospital for a check-up at this time. She was extremely scared, fearing that the child was feeling unwell.
As soon as they put the child down, the elder brother vomited out all the milk he had just drunk. This frightened the two of them, and they hurriedly picked up the child and went out to find Doctor Liu in the village.
Fortunately, she saw Aunt Su coming back from the door. After she told her what happened, Aunt Su led the two of them back into the house at a leisurely pace.
Aunt Su was worried that Lin Yue had never taken care of a child before, so she came back to check on the situation. She carefully explained to Lin Yue the precautions for newborns and taught her how to burp the baby.
After everything was settled, he smiled at Xu's father and said, "I forgot to tell you that Principal Xu came to see you yesterday. You were asleep at that time. I didn't expect Principal Xu to come again today. Is there something urgent?"
Father Xu is now the principal of Donglinjia Village. After hearing what she said, he smiled and said, "I was passing by here yesterday and stopped by to see Lin Yue. You don't know, although she has never been to a proper school, she is my favorite student. I know she lives alone, and I am afraid that she might have some inconvenience with her big belly, so I often stop by to see her."
Father Xu was a man of great learning. Aunt Su was very envious and praised him repeatedly, saying, "Our Xiao Hui's wife is really amazing. With a teacher like you, she must be very knowledgeable!"
He added: "I know that Teacher Xu is worried about Xiao Hui's wife. Don't worry, our team will definitely take good care of her."
The two of them were talking back and forth, and Lin Yue couldn't get a word in. She wanted to tell Aunt Su directly that this was her biological father, so that it would be more convenient for them to interact in the future. But Father Xu seemed to have guessed her plan, and gave her a look that told her to be patient, and didn't give her a chance to speak.
After a few more pleasantries, Aunt Su saw that Lin Yue was not in good spirits, so she took the initiative to say goodbye.
Others didn't know the relationship between Xu's father and Lin Yue, and it was not convenient for him to stay here for long. He whispered to Lin Yue: "Don't tell anyone that you and I are father and daughter."
After saying this, without waiting for Lin Yue to reply, he followed Aunt Su and left.
Lin Yue was very tired now. Her body was still very weak after giving birth. After the two kids fell asleep, she lay down on the kang and didn't want to move at all.