Father's Vine父亲的葡萄藤

张造云

Father spent 20 Yuan buying back home a vine (葡萄藤). In our eyes, it was just a stick of dry and withered rattan (藤条). Father moved a basin of soil into the yard. The withered vine was planted carefully in the courtyard next to the gate. “You can use it to start a fire if we have an earth stove,” Mother stood nearby and said to him with slight irony(讽刺). I said laughingly, “No leaves, no fruit, but it looks like a potted plant ...” When my father heard this he gave me a dirty look. I laughed gently with hand covering mouth and moved away with mother, happily standing and looking at him from a distance.

As promise to the spring, the white jasmine flowers (茉莉花) opened quietly inside the bars on the second floor. However, the vine was still dry and it was still sleeping deeply in earth. It just looked like a meditative (沉思的) old monk, turned a deaf ear to the spring. Neighbors sometimes stood in front of my house, chatting and making fun of the stick. Father gave them the cold shoulder without saying anything. He watered the plant carefully and sometimes applied some granulations (颗粒). I didnt know what it was. I guessed it should be fertilizer (肥料) as my father was an agronomist (农艺师).

I was not optimistic (乐观的) at all even though father cared a lot for the vine.Spring had already passed more than a half. Tiny plant broke through the earth and sprouting (萌芽) leaves came out as usual. I couldnt find it alive as if it had no vitality(活力). Although father was a senior agronomist, but for a year, because of his using too much chlormequat chloride (矮壮素), the daisy was growing strangely. However, watching father being around the grape every day with serious attitude to it, I wished it would be possible to come out a bud, somewhere, which might made us surprised.

Coming in the early summer, the cloud in the sky, as if fissile (易分裂的) and tearing out, the rain was scrambling to fall toward the ground. I was running home in the drops, from the corner of the alley.I had a glimpse of the old vine which was taking a bath in the rain. I had a sudden feeling that I had seen a light green mud. Yes, it was true. There was a tender green mud breaking free out from the middle withered part. From that day on, a bud green got loose. Dry skin came out new shoots. Fathers vine was no longer an old dry stick. It ushered (迎接) in a renaissance (新生) of its own, in a beautiful late spring time, with tender care under my father!

Midsummer after midsummer, the vine was growing rapidly and it made a pleasant shade, more and more flourishing. The other fly in the ointment (美中不足) was that there were no grapes. Neighbors played cards under the shade, chatting with a cup of tea, and they said, “No grapes but shade, thats enough.”I know that father was not going to give it up. I was certainly sure that father would make it successful even if he was hanging around the vine casually.

But this summer, there were some bunches of grapes, hung down on the branches, just like round green beads. With the advent of maturing time, they became bright, clear and transparent (透明) balls, one by one fully. Daughter told me, she counted the grapes with her grandpa together and there were totally 15 bunches of balls. Its great. I touched the vine softly as if I felt there was a strong sense of insisting and dedicating as fathers usual life style. Then I wandered in the shade. The “rustling” wind was gently breezing. I faced up, with an index finger pointing at the bunches and numbering, “One, two, three ...”

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