In the quiet afternoon, on a bench in a house, sitting side by side with a father and son, the young son is reading a newspaper, and the elderly father is sitting quietly next to him.
Suddenly, a sparrow flew into the nearby grass, and the father murmured, “What is that?” The son looked up at the grass and answered casually, “A sparrow.” Then continue to look down at the newspaper.
The father nodded thoughtfully, watching the sparrows fluttering in the grass, and asked, “What is that?” Reluctantly, the son raised his head again and frowned. “Dad, I just told you, it’s a sparrow.” Then he shook the newspaper in his hand and read it again.
The sparrow flew up and landed on the grass not far away. The father’s eyes also rose and fell, looking at the sparrow on the ground. The father bowed down curiously and asked again:
“What’s that?” The son got impatient, closed the newspaper and said to his father, “A sparrow, father, a sparrow!” Then, pointing to the sparrow, he pronounced aloud word by word: “Touch – ah – ma! Seven – leap – sparrow!” . Then he turned and stared angrily at his father.
The old man did not look at his son, but still turned slowly to the sparrow, as if to ask again:
“What’s that?” This made the son angry, he waved his arms and shouted angrily at his father: “What are you doing? I have told you so many times! It is a sparrow! Don’t you understand?”
The father stood up without a word, and the son asked, “Where are you going?” His father raised his hand to signal that he should not follow him and walk back into the house.
The sparrow flew away, and the son threw away the newspaper in frustration and sighed to himself.
After a while, the father came back with a small book in his hand. He sat down, turned to a page, handed it to his son, pointed to a passage, and said, “Read!”
The son read: “Today, I was sitting in the park with my youngest son, who just turned three years old, when a sparrow fell in front of us. The son asked me 21 times, ‘What is that?’
I answered him twenty-one times, “It’s a sparrow.” Every time he asked, I gave him a hug, over and over again, without bothering at all, thinking how lovely my little boy is…”
The old man’s eyes gradually revealed the smile lines, as if to see the scene of the past. When the son finished reading, he closed the book shamefully and held his father close with his arms, choking back tears.
It turned out that the father was not senile, but just saw the sparrow, recalled the intimacy between father and son in the past, and deliberately repeated questions.
The lovely child in the diary has now grown up, no longer chasing his father to ask “what is that?”, but just bow his head to read the newspaper, for the father around him, no longer care.
The warmth of the past has become a memory, and in front of him, he was only asked by his father four times and was extremely impatient and angry.
It’s a reflective story, less than five minutes long, but it encapsulates a weighty topic: If love has length, how different are children’s love for their parents than parents’ love for their children?
The difference between 21 and 4 is not a number, but an unspeakable love. Is the children exhaustive life also can not repay the debt, which contains too much care;
From small to large, from birth to death, with every step of our life, consistent; Parents’ deep love, bathed in children all the time, without reservation, without complaint, because no return, it is more difficult to pay off.
If the parents are old,
Don’t blame them for the incontinence that soiled your clothes, as they once did for you;
Don’t blame them for stoop and slow step, they also held you upright waist, toddler;
Do not despise them for pouring their food and their mouths on their clothes, as they have fed you;
Don’t bother them with their babbling, because when you were babbling, they listened to you as a song.
