Originally, Lin's mother planned to leave after Zong Ping and Wu Shujuan left, but on the one hand, there would be no ships going to Guangzhou in the next few days, and if Lin's mother wanted to leave, she would have to leave on a supply ship with Zong Ping and the others. Secondly, there were only a few days left until New Year's Day, and if she set out now, she would have to celebrate the holiday on the road. After much thought, Lin's mother decided to go back after New Year's Day.
Zong Shao was also at home on New Year's Day. The couple got up early and bought a bunch of vegetables, including chicken, duck, fish and pork.
Although it is already January, the temperature on Yazhou Island is still not low. Vegetarian dishes are fine. Even leafy vegetables can be kept for a day or two without being fried. But meat is not so good. It can be kept overnight at best. If it is kept any longer, the taste will change.
Therefore, Lin Wei usually doesn't buy too much meat, usually just enough for one or two meals. For example, at Beibei's full-month banquet, she gave away most of the remaining meat dishes and kept some for herself, which she ate that night.
The amount of meat that Lin Wei and Zong Shaoti brought back didn’t seem like much, but they might not be enough to finish in two meals.
Lin's mother, who was taking care of her granddaughter at home, saw this and asked, "Why did you buy so much meat?"
"Eat, you're going back tomorrow, so let's have a good meal today."
"Then there's no need to buy so many vegetables. Will you have no way to live after I go back?" Lin's mother still felt that her daughter and son-in-law were too wasteful.
Lin Wei said, "That's just a little bit. We have a large family now, and we have a lot of seafood every month. Even if we finish this meal, we can still eat fish every day."
This statement is a bit exaggerated, but not entirely untrue. Yazhou Island is close to the sea, and each person is supplied with three or four kilograms of seafood per month. Families with many people can indeed have a fish every day.
From this perspective, Yazhou Island is indeed better than Shicheng. Although it is not as prosperous, the supply and marketing cooperative has everything you need, and the food is okay. Her daughter has gained a lot of weight after giving birth.
But the last sentence cannot be said in front of her daughter. Lin's mother didn't know what her daughter was thinking. Others thought the plumper the better, but she was different. She always thought she looked better when she was as thin as a skeleton. After giving birth, she finally gained some weight, but she kept shouting that she wanted to lose weight.
Problem!
Because Lin's mother was leaving tomorrow, Lin Wei didn't let her into the kitchen at noon. She cooked by herself, with Zong Shao helping her, and they prepared a large table of dishes.
After dinner, Lin Wei started packing luggage for her mother.
Because it was only Lin's mother who was traveling with him, they were afraid that she could not bring too many things, so they packed less luggage this time. They only bought more dried goods such as abalone and sea cucumber.
In Lin's mother's words, "When the people in our brigade heard that your father and I brought back abalone and sea cucumbers, their eyes widened. For half a month, people kept coming to our house to see what the abalone and sea cucumbers looked like. Now when people in our brigade talk about you, they are so envious and say that you are lucky. This year, some people kept asking me if there were any unmarried young men in Zong Shao's army and wanted me to introduce them to a partner."
Lin Wei thought back to the letter she received from home this year and asked, "Why didn't you tell me about this?"
"What are you talking about? I've already refused!" Lin's mother was very sober. "They only see the good life you have now, and forget how hard it was for you in the past. Besides, the soldiers in Zong Shao's army have hometowns all over the country. After marriage, the girl can't follow the army and can only go to her hometown in the south. If she is alone in an unfamiliar place and gets tossed around by others, her family won't even know about it. If it really happens, it may not be a good thing."
"Mom, you think it through clearly." Lin Wei flattered.
Mother Lin said smugly, "Of course, I won't get any benefit from introducing them to someone. It's fine if the couple lives well after marriage, but if something happens when they are away from home, my family will hate me to death. I won't do such a thankless job."
After saying this, Mother Lin began to count the dried seafood that she was going to take back.
The dried goods were wrapped in oil paper and tied with hemp rope according to their types. There were seven packages in total, four of which were bought by Lin Wei for her parents, and the remaining three were brought by Lin's mother for her second son.
At the beginning of the year, because the son of the leader of my second brother's unit got married, he added two abalones to the gift. Because of their small size, this thing is not rare in Yazhou Island, but it is very precious in Shicheng.
After opening the gift, his leader almost didn't dare to accept it. He went to talk to Lin Wei's second brother the next day. Only after he learned that the abalone was bought by his subordinate's parents when they visited relatives on Yazhou Island did he feel at ease to accept the abalone.
Since then, Lin Wei's second brother's leader has become much more friendly towards him.
Therefore, this time when Lin's mother was coming to take care of Lin Wei while she was accompanying the army, Lin Wei's second brother asked his mother to bring some abalone and sea cucumber for him, intending to use them as gifts in the future.
He also told the news to his leader, saying that if he wanted it, he should ask his mother, and if he could buy more, he could bring some for the leader as well.
In fact, dried abalone is just so-so when eaten. It is fresh, but it is not to be said that it is a delicacy that cannot be compared to other foods. In inland cities, its reputation is even more famous. It sounds so impressive to say, "My family is eating abalone today", and it is also very respectable to give abalone as a gift.
Therefore, when Lin Wei's second brother said that he might be able to help take care of the children, the leader immediately agreed and was about to give Lin Wei's second brother money. However, he felt that this matter was still uncertain and he was not sure how much he could bring, so he paid the money himself.
Since this matter concerns her son's work, Lin's mother is very concerned about it. After coming to the island, she mentioned it to Lin Wei.
Of course, she did not ask her daughter to save the seafood supply tickets to buy abalone and sea cucumber for her son. She just told her to take some if she could and not to go empty-handed.
However, Lin Wei supports her second brother's progress. Although she is willing to provide for her parents in their old age, Lin's father and mother have old-fashioned ideas and would rather follow their son. But even if they change their minds one day and are willing to live with Lin Wei, it is definitely better for their son to have a successful future than to have no future.
Therefore, after discussing with Zong Shao, Lin Wei saved three kilograms of seafood supply every month and bought a total of four kilograms of abalone and two kilograms of sea cucumbers. Half of them were given to Lin Wei's second brother. As for how her second brother and the leader divided it, she didn't care.
Lin Wei bought a lot of abalone and sea cucumbers, so she didn't buy much other seafood. However, she bought a lot of coconut candy and dried mangoes. After all, they didn't require tickets and the prices were cheap, so it would be very face-saving to take them back and share them with relatives and friends.
At night, the mother and daughter slept in the same room, along with Mingming and Ruirui. The reason was simple. In Mingming's words, "Grandma is leaving soon, and we want to talk to her more."
In the end, only Zong Shao and Bei Bei slept in the second bedroom, because it was inconvenient for one of them to sleep in the same room with Lin's mother, and the other couldn't talk. Plus, the bed in the master bedroom was just right for four people, and it would be a bit crowded if there were more. The little guy, who couldn't express his opinion, was squeezed out of the master bedroom with his father.
Mingming was very proud of himself for pushing his father out. He kept jumping around on the bed, preventing everyone else from sleeping. He only calmed down after Lin Wei got angry.
It was not late, and Ruirui fell asleep quickly after closing her eyes. The mother and daughter chatted until the late night before going to bed, so that Lin Wei had two huge dark circles under her eyes when she went to school the next day.
Lin's mother was on a boat in the afternoon, and Lin Wei happened to not have classes, so Zong Shao asked for leave, applied to drive the jeep back, and took the whole family to see his mother-in-law off.
Although she knew that her son-in-law did this out of filial piety, Lin's mother still couldn't help but say a few words, but only a few words. When they arrived at the dock, the sadness of parting surged into her heart.
However, the overall atmosphere was much better than at the beginning of the year. That time, Lin's mother knew that Lin Wei was hiding something in her heart, and she was always a little worried when she left. Lin Wei didn't know if she would have a future or if she would ever see her parents again, so she couldn't hold back her tears.
But now Lin Wei no longer has to worry about life and death. She knows that there will always be a day when she and her parents will be reunited. Therefore, when she saw Lin's mother off, her heart was full of hope and she was not too sad.
…
After Lin's mother left, Lin Wei started taking the three children to school. Although Beibei might not get up in the morning, in order to deal with emergencies, she moved the wake-up time forward by ten minutes.
Raising an extra child is certainly not as simple as getting up ten minutes earlier. Although Lin Wei still has as many classes to teach after returning to work, she is much busier than before maternity leave because she has to take care of Beibei.
When Lin's mother was alive, she said she wanted to lose weight. But after her mother passed away, she no longer had to try to lose weight, and all the weight she had gained during pregnancy fell back.
Fortunately, after having a little sister, Mingming and Ruirui have become much more sensible. When they are at school, they will help take care of the little sister. When they return home, they will also help with some housework within their ability.
Lin Wei was completely relaxed at night, because Zong Shao did all the work and she just had to lie back. But this only applies when Zong Shao is at home. If he goes out to sea, what awaits Lin Wei may be twice as busy.
Of course, Lin Wei does not have such an experience for the time being, because the Spring Festival this year comes relatively early, and Zong Shao does not need to go out to sea as the New Year is approaching. When the final exams were over and the school was on winter vacation, Lin Wei's life became more and more relaxed.
Zong Shao was resting on the day of dust cleaning, so Lin Wei helped him clean the house upstairs and downstairs.
The focus of cleaning was the master bedroom. After Lin's mother left, Zong Shao returned the single bed to their leader and moved a chest of drawers from downstairs into the master bedroom.
Lin Wei put all the milk powder and malted milk into the chest of drawers. She thought that the room would look neater and more spacious. However, in less than a week, the master bedroom became a mess, and she still felt that the storage space was not enough.
So during the general cleaning, Lin Wei took Zong Shao along and took out all the things in the closet and chest of drawers, intending to find out the main reason why they didn't have enough space.
When putting the things she had taken out back one by one, Lin Wei turned over a stack of photos.
It’s a bit of an exaggeration to say there are a pile of photos. In fact, there are only seven or eight photos in total. Two of them are solo photos of her student days. They look very young, but she always feels silly. The rest are photos taken when Mingming Ruirui was one month old, when she and her mother-in-law took the child to the photo studio to take photos.
Before the two children were born, Zong's mother had mentioned taking a family portrait, but the army only granted limited leave, and the journey was long, so nearly half of the time was spent on the road. When Zong Shao returned, Lin Wei was still in confinement and could not go out in the wind. The two children had midnight snacks, and they were afraid that they would report illness, so they did not take a family portrait. They only took a few photos of the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law holding the children.
At that time, Lin Wei thought that life was long and she could wait for Zong Shao to come home next time to take care of the baby. However, when he came home again, he was already seriously ill and terminally ill.
They never had the chance to take a complete family photo again.
Zong Shao took the photo from Lin Wei and looked at it carefully.
In the photo, Lin Wei and her mother-in-law were sitting opposite each other on a long bench, holding Mingming and Ruirui in their arms respectively. The two people's smiles in the photo are not very bright, but their eyes are bright, and it can be seen that they are in a good mood.
Lin Wei looked at Zong Shao rubbing the photo with his hands and suddenly said, "Next time you come to the room, let's take a family photo with the children, shall we?"
"Um?"
"Look at other families, they all took family portraits. Sister Deng's family even printed a really big one and put it in a glass frame and hung it in the living room. We don't have any at home, and I don't know which one to choose when I want to hang it up." Lin Wei asked with a smile, "After we take the photo, can we print a big one and hang it up too?"
Zong Shao nodded: "Okay."
"It's settled then. When is your next day off?"
"Number twenty-eight."
Lin Wei asked in surprise: "You're taking a holiday so early this year?"
Zong Shao explained, "We have two days off on the 28th and 29th, and I have to be on duty on the 30th. We will take turns to have holidays just like last year."
"Well, Photo Studio No. 28 shouldn't be closed for the day, right?"
"It should be closed after work on the 29th." Offices like this that are open to the public usually close late during the Chinese New Year.
Lin Wei said, "That's settled. Let's go take pictures on the 28th."
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Second update
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