Her parents lived in a small northern city. In winter, everything in that small northern town seemed frozen hard. Carrying bulging bags of gifts she’d bought for them, she breathed on her hands, stamped her feet, and knocked on their door.
Her mother, seeing her, was first startled, then so overjoyed she nearly wept, but she had no time for tears — she hurried to take the bags, large and small, from her hands, scolding her for not calling ahead so she could have made preparations. Her mother took her hands and breathed on them, rubbing them between her own. “Look how frozen you are, and no gloves either.” She hugged her mother, and her father too, and for a moment basked in their minute, tender care; she wanted to say nothing at all.
Dinner was, as always, her mother’s best dish: dumplings. Her mother had spent the afternoon making them, beaming with happiness, and her father had stir-fried a few side dishes. When the steaming dumplings were set on the table, her mother said, “Eat up. You can’t get dumplings in the south, can you?” She answered, “You can get anything these days. But eating dumplings in the south, you never feel the atmosphere of eating noodles and dumplings in a northern winter — something is always missing, they just don’t taste right.”
The wrinkles on her mother’s face bloomed into a smile. “That’s because down south you can’t eat your mother’s dumplings. They’ve been your favorite since you were little.” Wu Aizhen nearly teared up at this. She picked up a dumpling and bit into it; a lingering fragrance filled her mouth. “Delicious! Really delicious!” Her mother laughed, the wrinkles deepening still more…
These last few days, her mother had been absorbed in a job she considered very important: sewing diapers for her brother’s unborn child. “Your brother called to say your sister-in-law is almost due — it’s a boy. Your father and I will get the paperwork done soon and go see them. I was just about to call and tell you.” “Mom, kids use disposable diapers now, not cloth ones.” “Hmph! What do you know. That paper stuff can’t compare to cotton. A baby’s tender skin can’t be wrapped up like that — you’ll give him a rash.” Her mother had been frugal her whole life, yet now, for this grandson not yet born, she had taken scissors to her own brand-new long underwear and cut them square by square into diapers, without the slightest pang, without so much as blinking. This kind of fabric, she declared, made the best diapers.
Her father kept many plants, and every day he watered and loosened the soil of every pot, large and small, with punctual care. Wu Aizhen looked them over: they were all unremarkable plants, the kind whose names nobody knew. Only one pot had bloomed a single small yellow flower; the rest were bare branches or green foliage, and several pots held the same variety, varying only in size. Her father explained it was because of winter; in spring, these flowers would all be beautiful.
Once, her mother had stuck a plastic flower into one of the pots. At a quick glance, it really did pass for the real thing. Her father immediately told her mother, with great seriousness, that her aesthetic sense was utterly lacking — fake was fake, and no matter how pretty, a fake could never match a real plant, even if the real one were nothing but a blade of grass in a pot. As he spoke, he casually plucked out the plastic flower and tossed it aside. Her mother laughed and said, “At your age, nearly in the grave, and still so rigid about things. What does it matter whether something’s real or fake? You’ve worn yourself out your whole life over those opinions of yours.”
Both her parents were nearing seventy. Wu Aizhen had not seen them for over half a year, yet she could clearly sense their advancing age, especially in their memory. Once, she wanted to take them out, but neither could find the house key. Her father insisted he had given it to her mother; her mother, for the life of her, could not remember where she’d put it, then said she seemed to recall returning it to him. The two grew so tense over this they nearly quarreled. In the end, Wu Aizhen found the keys in the pocket of a pair of pants her father had changed out of and thrown in the washing machine. Having been proven right, her mother berated him for hours. Her father, knowing he was in the wrong, lay on the bed sighing and stewing in silence.
Wu Aizhen could no longer bring herself to reproach either of her aging parents. At their age, all she could do was humor them; getting either of them to change was nearly impossible. She could only hope they would be safe, happy, healthy, and content — exactly what they wished for her. The Dharma teaches that one who truly cultivates and realizes it in body and mind gains merit beyond measure. She hoped that perhaps, at some moment, she herself might faithfully accept and practice the Dharma, and when that moment came, she would dedicate its merit to the parents who had given her life and raised her, and to all the parents who had given her the grace of birth and nurture through life after life…
She stayed at her parents’ home for over two weeks. When she left, she gave them some money, though she was very short on funds herself — the money was borrowed from Zheng Meiqin before she left City A. Yet she played the part of someone well-off and left them a thick stack, wanting only to spare them any worry over how she was getting by. She knew they had their pensions, more than enough for the two of them to live on, and she knew what they truly wanted from her was not this bit of money — they wanted her to be happy and content, just as she wished for them. But she had no other way to repay them, and could only say in her heart: “Mom, Dad — your daughter may look like she has nothing, but she has love in her heart, and she lives very happily!” She did not know if her parents heard the words in her heart. At their parting, all she saw was her mother’s white hair lifting in the wind, and her father’s faltering, age-worn back… and the tears could only stream silently down her face…
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