Chinese girl was always curious about her mother, only to learn the truth 20 years later.
*Below is an article shared by author Gia Ngoc Van, posted on Toutiao page (China).
Childhood without mother
I was born in a remote mountain village in Shanxi Province, China. My father was a poor farmer, and I don’t know who my mother was. Since the moment I was born, I had grandparents, a father, an aunt and uncle who loved and cared for me, but my mother was nowhere to be seen.
My father became disabled in the leg after accidentally falling down a hillside. This accident left him unable to walk normally like before and had to use crutches. Every time I helped my father go somewhere, people in the village would look at us and gossip about something. This made me very uncomfortable. However, I myself did not know what I should do to dispel that sadness.
When I was a child, every time I saw my friends being picked up by their mothers after school, I also longed for that happy moment. The desire to meet my mother made my curiosity about the woman who gave birth to me even stronger. Many times, I gathered the courage to ask my father: "Where is my mother? Why have I never seen her?"
But every time, my father's eager eyes waiting for an answer always responded with a "change of pace" like "have you finished your homework yet?" or "I'm going to Mr. X's house for a bit"...
Gradually, I also forgot the question that made me have to find the answer throughout my childhood.
Growing up, I was always bullied by my classmates at school. They chased me and called me a “bastard” because I didn’t have a mother.
Every time like that, I ran home and cried in my father's arms. At those times, my father always comforted me and told me to be strong and not to pay attention to what other people said.
However, he did not reveal who my mother was, where she was, and what she did because I cried. This made me very upset and I often blamed my father secretly.
After graduating from high school, I did not go to university but went to work in town to earn money to support my family. Here, I met a colleague named Tieu Loi.
She is 5 years older than me and is a married woman. After 1 year of working together, we became close and easily shared many things with each other.
From these conversations, I learned that Tieu Loi's situation was similar to mine, never having met his mother.
It turned out that after Xiao Lei was born, her mother left for another place. Telling her story, Xiao Lei concluded: “Actually, her father used to drink and gamble, which caused their marriage to reach a dead end, beyond saving.”
Listening to Tieu Loi's story, I immediately related it to my own story and began to doubt my father.
Just like that, the questions in my mind grew more and more and could not be resolved. On the occasion of the following holiday, I went home and asked my father these questions.
However, my father still did not answer but instead used his crutches to leave. At that moment, my whole world collapsed. Even when I was grown up, my father still insisted on keeping secrets about my mother. This made me even angrier at him and I was too lazy to go back to my hometown to visit my family.
Dad's Secret
After returning to work at the factory, I told this story to Xiao Lei. She advised me that if I wanted to know the family secret, I should go back to my hometown and ask my relatives or neighbors.
After some hesitation, I decided to go see my distant relative, Aunt Tue Lan, to find answers to my questions.
The conversation with my aunt made me realize many things. Before I left, Aunt Tue Lan told me to treat my father well and not to make him sad. After leaving my aunt's house, I immediately took a bus back to my hometown. When I saw my father struggling to move around the house with crutches in his hand, I ran over, hugged him, cried and apologized.
Auntie Tue Lam told me that after an accident that injured his leg when he was young, my father gave up the idea of starting a family. At the age of 27, he heard the cry of an abandoned baby in the weeds in front of his house, so he took it home to raise. That baby was me.
In the years that followed, my father continued to search for information about my biological parents. Not only that, because he was afraid that his daughter would suffer from living in a poor family, he also contacted some well-off families in the area to adopt me.
However, when they found out I was a girl, those families immediately refused. So my disabled father, regardless of the hardship, did all kinds of jobs to earn money to raise me for the past 20 years.
He never thought about getting married because he wanted to take care of me wholeheartedly until I settled down.
After knowing this truth, I couldn't control my tears. I myself never imagined that my father had sacrificed so much for me.
The more I thought about it, the more I felt guilty for doubting and blaming my father. Along with the belated apologies, at that sacred moment, I promised myself that I would try my best to give my father a better life.
Because even though we are not blood related, my father spent his whole youth raising me, so when I grow up, I also want to try to make up for my incomplete youth and take care of my father's old age.
Source: https://giadinh.suckhoedoisong.vn/chua-1-lan-duoc-gap-me-toi-luon-trach-tham-bo-20-nam-sau-biet-duoc-su-that-toi-xin-loi-bo-trong-nuoc-mat-172250108145049262.htm
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