Disciplined Lover

By Ligongshang 

People came to America from other countries with many different reasons and purposes; then gradually melted in a great smelting furnace with their different background features finally. But some fair stories followed them never been forgotten.

One day before a Chinese Spring Festival, my father would leave for somewhere nobody knows even himself. “It’s said a very far place, and need staying there for a long time, longer than what we think.” he said to my mother cryptically.

 My elder brother and I stood by him; we just got out off government running kindergarten for sending him at railway station with my mother. He watched my brothers and me necking and petting us: “I love you so mach!” he said. “Please take care of them carefully for me.” He said to my mother.

  On the day of the festival, my brother and I saw other kids in neighbors playing firecrackers helped with their father, I asked my mother: “Where did daddy go?” Mammy smiled and shook her head slowly.

 Three days later, my brother and I went back to kindergarten, I seemed listened to some nursery nurses talk about my parents: “The couple got order separately to go somewhere and each other don’t know where who is.” “They are all military doctors…” I picked up my ears, want to catch more words, they noticed I was hearing, turned about talking in undertone. That was 1960.

 When I was sensible to something later, it’s said my father didn’t know my mother would leave us so soon after his leaving. My mother took a train traveling for three days to a great bleak desert region. Then transferred a team of trucks went to deep desolate and uninhabited Gobi desert. The drivers who escorted travelers told: when seeing a lonely tree with red flags, that’s our destination for this journey.

In the next morning, they saw the lonely big tree with flags out and away. Some military men sit on the ground under the tree besides some trucks, enjoying a person playing accordion that sound melody and pleasing to the ears.

The melody was well-known to my mother. When the truck she rode close the tree, all the military men under the tree stood up, and greeted new comers with an acclaim, kindling to the daring of it. The driver said here is still not final destination, all people need to transfer another trucks to their each terminus. 

My mother recognized the man playing accordion was my father; she called down his name pleasantly surprised. My parents met each other glowing with prides in surprise, their eyes kindled with excitement.

All the people had lunch around the tree, my father told my mother in a little bit pity: “you are not in my list.” He pointed the papers in his hand: “I meet the people in the list here, and take them leave after lunch.”

Both of my parents did not inquire about where each other would be and when each other could meet again. They just bid farewell to each other followed their discipline. My father threw a red scarf over my mother’s shoulder, the scarf flapped her face.

Their comrades plaint: “both of them got together in a rush under the red flag, and part aside in haste under the red flag, never have any of complaints.”

From that time on, my parents wrote each other every week. Both of them thought they are away from each other a long distance, because they got a letter from each other need waiting whole week.  

In the third Sunday of October 1964, my parents could not control their feeling to write each other in due time and outpouring excitement to cite news in newspaper: On October16, 1964, China tests successfully the first nuclear bomb. According to the letters, both of them guised each other all worked on the great programs.

By the Chinese Spring Festival 1966, my mother returned to home with 312 letters my father mailed to her. She wrote to my father on the festival day: “Both of our loved kids grow up and go to school…… Do you remember the lonely big tree? A new thriving city had surprised built up next to it; I tied the red scarf on its branch.”     

Two weeks later, my father got back home with 315 letters that my mother wrote. When our family sat down together happily, all we laughed to know that my parents only two kilometers apart from each other during the past six years.

February12, 2014