讀李希光博文

頌 李 母

(仿木蘭辭)

唧唧復唧唧，課堂手機急。希光著了忙，忽聞母低泣。問母何所思，問母何所憶。母正有所思，母正有所憶。氣短目光炯，聲聲呼兒名。湯藥三兩口，劇痛若趨輕。崢嶸歲月稠，汝且洗耳聽。風燭雖旦夕，慈母仍從容。

往事從頭說，一九三三年。降世東北陲，鐵蹄伴童年。旦聞扶桑曲，暮蕩高麗韆。不聞同胞笑朗聲，但聞松花江水多嗚咽。悄辭故鄉去，追夢火車頭。不聞爺娘喚女聲，但聞八路軍馬鳴啾啾。

十四抵丹東，光陰度若飛。食宿皆免費，學童有暖衣。還鄉足未穩，物是人已非。地主女兒悲，無奈忍炎涼。明珠豈投暗，金質竟閃光。南國研礦學，峰回路轉遇李郎。連理從此結，他鄉成故鄉。

礦井去復來，為國獻韶光。精準量瓦斯，數載無傷亡。難忘三年前，暢敘奧運共憑窗。鳥巢咫尺間，天涯忽獨翔。自慰且唏噓，孝子李希光。頭大娘難產，毛長父驚惶。門庭籠紫氣，學府添輝煌。傳薪有後人，笑看地久又天長！

文字已蒼白，借力木蘭辭。江城寄遙祝，逢凶化吉是吾期。

附後:李希光博文

Mother’s love never grows old

    I was giving a lecture when the phone rang. “Mother is calling me,” I told the students apologetically, “I have to answer it because mother is calling me from hospital. She is very ill.”

    “Ma is missing you.” Mother said. Her voice was barely heard, but I felt she was crying.

    “Don’t cry, Ma. I will come as soon as I finish class.”

    In a hospital ward, mother was lying in agony. Cancer has spread in her body and drugs could hardly alleviate her pain.

    When I entered the room, mother looked at me with an air of expectation. I pulled a chair and sat beside her bed. She had difficulty breathing. I gave her oxygen by inserting a cannula into her nose. Mother touched my face with her fingers and stroked my hair as if I was a baby.

    “Your birth was an ordeal,” mother said, “You were too slow coming. It took me more than a week to get you out. Again and again, I was wheeled in and out of the delivery room. Your head was too big, when being taken out. I was tortured for almost a month to deliver you the world.”

    “Your father did not come to see me until the 8^th day after you were born. I did not have an egg until the 9^th day after your birth. I never had any fish soup when I was in confinement.”

    “When your father finally came to see me, he did not understand the difficulty of childbirth. He asked: ’Isn’t it like a chicken laying an egg?’ Father even refused to hold you the first time he saw you. He said, ‘Look, the baby is all hair. I don’t like a hairy boy.’”

    Mother suddenly grabbed one of my ears and said mischievously, “Wash your ears every day so that you will not be deaf when you grow old.”

    “Are you very much in pain now?” I asked.

    She nodded.

    I fed mother a few drops of water through a straw. I gently stroked mother’s cheeks, chest, stomach, legs and feet. Mother looked less in pain. Then she looked at me with glowing eyes as if she had something important to announce.

    “Son, you don‘t have to buy special clothing for my funeral.” mother said calmly. “I’m going to wear a loose fitting garment, the Japanese-made overcoat your father bought years ago. For my feet, I like the pair of cloth shoes given by the mother of your student Xiao Lili.”

    In 1933, mother was born in a Manchurian village two years after the Japanese occupied Northeast China. Grandmother, a Manchurian lady, gave birth to 15 children but only 6 survived. Mother started her school by learning Japanese and singing the Japanese national song Kimigayo, until the Japanese surrendered in 1945. The following year, at the age of 14, taking a train and crossing the blockade line of the Nationalist army, mother went to a middle school run by the communist Eighth Route Army in Dandong, a city bordering Korea, where she not only received free education but also free accommodation in a dormitory, clothing and food.

    But her education in Dandong was ended in 1949 when the newly-founded communist government decided to terminate the all-providing school. Mother returned home only to find out that grandfather’s land and houses had been confiscated and grandfather had been labeled as a “landlord”.  

    Since grandfather had been labeled as a political enemy of the government, mother had no choice but to go to a mining college. Upon her graduation in 1953, mother and her classmate and boyfriend left Manchuria and went to southern China, where they got married and worked in coal mines for 40 years.

    Mother worked happily in 1950s and early 1960s as one of the first women mining engineers in China - until the dawn of the Cultural Revolution.

    In 1966, mother was persecuted as “stinky daughter of landlord” and stripped of her title of mining engineer. She was forced to labor as a miner. Father was sent to labor in a coal mine in the far southwestern province of Guizhou. Mother and father were then separated for 17 years. “Your father did not even come back home to see his dying mother,” mother always complained about this.  “Only I was there to take care of your grandmother and you.”

    But mother never complained about the country. "Do not complain about how the country mistreats you. But always ask yourself what you contribute to your country,” mother always lectured me like this.

    “What contribution did you make to the country?” I asked.

    “I measured gas levels in the mine. My measurement was accurate. The mines I measured never had any explosions. Never was a miner killed,” she said.

    Three years ago, I went to see my parents. Father sat by the window, looking at the Bird Nest, the stadium of Beijing Olympics. By that time, father was diagnosed as having lung cancer. “Be strong. I want you live to see Olympics with me, hand in hand,” mother told him, encouragingly. Bird Nest is only 10 minute walk from my parents’ home. But two weeks later, father passed away.

    A month before the Beijing Olympics, I flew to Inner Mongolia, where I ran in the Olympic Torch Relay in front of the Mausoleum of Genghis Khan. That night when I was back from Inner Mongolia, I gave my torch to mother. Mother placed the torch in front of father’s portrait, saying, “We should be proud of our son. He’s an Olympic torch runner. I’ve told all our neighbors and relatives about it.”

    The next morning, mother organized a gathering of all the retired people in her neighborhood and relayed the torch happily. They took a lot of pictures of each one holding the torch.   

    An hour had passed since I walked into the hospital. “I’ m sorry, son,” mother said, “I’m taking too much of your precious time.”

    “What are you talking about, Ma?” I said. “I’m your son!”