[Dialect of my hometown] The disappeared Grandma Bridge

Afternoon sunset

The yellow velvet light crawled in from the balcony, twisted its sluggish body like a lizard, and slowly left dry scratches on the beige carpet in the living room. At some point, it climbed onto the coffee table and crossed the tabletop. In the blink of an eye, Fading away, disappearing into the shadow of the fabric sofa.

The old lady sitting on the sofa was quietly counting the prescription medicines she had just received from the pharmacy. Sometimes she looked up and thought about it, it seemed she was wrong, so she counted again. The water in the porcelain cup on the table was warm and had its own flavor. At such a temperature, the old lady would sometimes hold the cup and want to drink it, but she would often wonder if she had finished drinking it.

The old lady looked at her granddaughter who came out of the kitchen. She has lived with her for at least twenty years. She has raised her like her own daughter since she was a child. It's a pity that she has been forgetful recently. When is this child? Why haven't you gone to school yet?

"If you don't leave, you won't be able to catch the school bus." 』

"Po, I stopped catching the school bus a long time ago." ’ I couldn’t hold back my laughter.

"Then you're done with school?" 』

"No, Po, I'm off work. 』

Since my grandfather passed away, my grandma has become increasingly mentally confused. She is very familiar with the past, but she often misunderstands what is happening now. Most of my relatives live in Thailand. It was originally agreed that my grandma could go to Thailand to live with her son for retirement, but after buying the air tickets, the old man suddenly insisted on staying, and gave many excuses as if in a dream, but the most pressing reason was But "she still has to cook for grandpa."

So I am temporarily responsible for taking care of and accompanying the elderly. After all, we have been living according to this model.

In the past seven years, grandma's inner and outer worlds have been in conflict. The scene of her hometown [Xiapu] in her mind has become increasingly clear and vivid, like returning to the port of youth. My job is just to recall with her. Let her return to the land near the sea in her mind.

Grandpa and grandma would chat in their hometown dialect in private. Among the younger generation, I am the only one who still understands the Xiapu dialect. It is like a combination of Minnan dialect and Fu'an dialect. But my grandma doesn't like people to misunderstand that the dialect spoken in her hometown is As for Fu Lao, even if it is just a fish ball, she will correct it in the way of her hometown, like a kind of guardian of her hometown. Because there are so many dialects in Fujian, and the accents in each county and city are completely different, the sense of intimacy with the same language has become a very important requirement for the elderly who have been away from their hometown for too long.

Xiapu dialect has seven tones, which are different from Mandarin. Speaking of me, you (ru), and he (yi) all have a nasal sound.

Here are some examples

• [Don't] is pronounced [Nai] (I heard that one of my favorite words when I was a child was Nai, which means Nai for everything.)
• [What did you say? ] Pronunciation is [Lei, Gong (light tone) Mi No (rising)? ]
• [Telephone call] is pronounced [Padingou]
• [Don’t say...] is pronounced [ Mou Gong... (followed by a sentence)]. When I was a child, whenever I heard my grandparents lower their tones and start with "Mou Gong...", I would definitely come forward. I kept asking "Lei, Gong Mi No?" Ahhhh? ]
• [Fan] is pronounced [Manet] and sometimes we talk about this at dinner.
• [waste material] is pronounced as [ Mou No sai]. It is a curse word to accuse people of being useless and stupid.

In fact, there are many, many bits and pieces of sentences. Due to the difficulty of inheritance, no one in the family talks about it now. This is just the connection between me and my grandparents, a mysterious channel that only we can go to heaven to listen to.

In every day I spent with my grandma, I kept searching for and digging out the stories of my hometown in my grandma’s memory. The stories of those houses and old friends surrounded us, wandering around my grandma’s living apartment, like the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. Shadows include the family prosperity, bandit rule, the Japanese army, the fall of Japan, the Cultural Revolution, escape, terror, accidents, exodus... and silence.

Unpredictable chaos day and night, my grandmother ran away in her memories, leaving her apartment in a panic to avoid the Japanese air raid sirens, and she stumbled and fell in the corridor, frightening my uncle who had just returned from Thailand, so my grandmother had to be sent to the hospital early. A nursing home with medical care. In the parallel universe of time, my mother-in-law came and went in the past and present, but I still had not graduated from high school in her script.

The sun is setting at noon, and the yellow velvet light still creeps in from the balcony, but everything in the apartment is still, arranged coldly, showing uneven shapes, and it stays in our hands that day when we didn’t even have time to say goodbye. Style.

Grandma’s house no longer exists. To be honest, my formal [home] has disappeared.

So, I planted the roots of memories in the dialect, and firmly remembered the song "Grandma's Bridge" that I couldn't finish singing even though I shook it back and forth.