[Life] Mom, Shouldering the Whole World

Author: JEFFI CHAO HUI WU

Time: 2025-7-02 Wednesday, 4:12 PM

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[Life] Mom, Shouldering the Whole World

My mother worked very hard every day back then, often carrying a load of 100 to 140 pounds and walking 2 to 5 kilometers. It was not occasional physical labor, but a daily routine that continued year after year without interruption. In my childhood memories, my mother was very short, and her silhouette was always accompanied by that long, flat carrying pole. Her daily life was spent either carrying the load or on the way to carry it. It was a road of relentless busyness throughout the year, with no distinction between sunny days and rainy days, no breaks in summer or winter, no complaints, and no choices.

Her shoulders are the fulcrum, the burden-bearer, the silent shout. Not for the sake of achieving any great feat, but simply to survive, to maintain the most basic life of an ordinary family. Every day, her shoulder pole carries different heavy loads: burning bricks and preparing fuel—carrying over 100 pounds of coal from 2 kilometers away back to the brick kiln; building a distiller's pit with bricks—90 pounds of red bricks, a round trip of 2.5 kilometers; hauling lime, gravel, and sand—each load weighing between 80 to 140 pounds, day after day, soaking her clothes with sweat; fetching charcoal for winter heating—setting out early to climb small hills, bringing back 70 pounds of charcoal until returning at dusk; delivering grain, transporting mulberry leaves, cutting grass for roofing—each trip involves dozens or even hundreds of pounds, every time a step under heavy burden. She even has to take care of silkworms, dig sweet potatoes, and pull seedlings... Many hard tasks that men are unwilling to undertake, she silently bears alone.

I still remember the hardest phase for her was at the turn of summer and autumn, when the sun was blazing. She had to carry soaked straw and half-dried grains uphill to the drying ground, making seven or eight trips back and forth in a day. The ground was scorching hot, and sweat constantly dripped into her eyes. Yet she never shirked her duties or made excuses. Once, when she had a severe cold and a high fever of 39 degrees, she still gritted her teeth and persisted, tying a cloth around her forehead to shield her eyes, and managed to complete the day's tasks. Her clothes were perpetually wet and dry, and her entire set of cloth garments was kept clean and tidy solely by her own hands; almost none of her clothes were hung out to dry by anyone else.

What I remember most is that her grain ration was 34 jin per month, but her actual consumption often exceeded 40 jin. To save grain coupons, she often secretly reduced her own meals to leave more for her family. She never complained and never asked for help. Sometimes, when her comrades saw that she really couldn't take it anymore, they would secretly slip her some grain coupons or sweet potato dried slices, but she always smiled and refused, saying, "I can endure," yet in the end, she would still cry in a corner, keeping all those acts of kindness in her heart.

But her life is not just about the burden and sweat. Every day after she carries the load home, she still puts aside her fatigue, squats down, and personally helps me wash my feet, wipe my sweat, and trim my nails, caring for me, whom she calls her "little sun," as if I were a piece of porcelain. She never shows her hardships on her face; instead, she conveys all her tenderness through the simplest actions. She is the one who sews my clothes for me late at night, the one who adds salt to my porridge and quietly places a fried egg in it for me in the morning. She hides all her exhaustion behind a smile, bears all the suffering in silence, and dispels all the hardships with warmth.

Perhaps it is her resilience and unspoken strength that made me understand from a young age: true strength is not about how to conquer the world, but how to silently bear the weight of the world and still move forward with a smile. My mother never told me what words like "responsibility," "commitment," and "promise" meant; she simply wrote these words into the initial draft of my life with her actions every day.

Looking back now, those heavy burdens did not crush her back; instead, they built an unshakable mountain in my life. Today, the myriad tasks I carry on my shoulders are no longer bricks and rice, but systems, structures, and technology. Yet I know that the source of these "structures" is the extension of that old burden—an inherent resilience that is silent yet never broken, a life structure that even the most advanced algorithms cannot replicate.

Mom's yoke was the earliest "structural system"; her shoulders were the starting point for my understanding of the word "load-bearing." It was she who taught me: a person may have nothing, but as long as they still bear the world on their shoulders, they cannot fall.

Now, every time I stand in front of people and talk about "system closure," "extreme logic," and "structure-driven," I always know in my heart that the earliest system closure was not designed by me in Excel, but was upheld decades ago by a small yet powerful mother, with her backbone supporting the ever-online system called "home."

Source: http://www.australianwinner.com/AuWinner/viewtopic.php?t=696630