Essay: My Baby (1)

Posted on July 20, 2017

Hi, everyone:

In the early morning, at just six oclock, I was awake, and the weather was somewhat hot and abnormal in the early summer, there was a hotness in the air that suggested rain. With the hot and humid air, I could not fall asleep again, rose and dressed myself, went to the bathroom and took a shower, now felt much better---fresh and ivigorating again. At the present, it was not a bad choice to kill time by reading.

Recently, I have been reading the original English novel: The Good Earth (大地), written by Pearl S. Buck (赛珍珠June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973), she is an American by born and by ancestry, but growed up in China since her age of five-months old, spent most of her life before 1934 in Zhenjiang, China, so her first language is Chinese(the local dialect by her Chinese playmates, and classical Chinese by a Chinese scholar named Mr. Kung), won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China in The Good Earth, which had been forbidden to read in China during the Cultural Revolution,.

Following the Comminst Revolution in 1949, Pearl was repeatedly refused all attempts to visit her beloved China, but never made it. During the Cultural Revolution, Pearl, as a preeminent American writer of Chinese village life, was denounced as an “American cultural imperialist”. And at 80, she was hearbroken when prevented from visiting China with Richard Nixon in 1972.

(Afterward, I will also continue reading her translation of classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber(红楼梦). Neither have I ever read its Chinese version, and it’s time to make up a missed lesson.)

Lying on the sofa, I read The Good Earth (downloaded from internet) in my Kindle, and reading filled time and distracted me and the time flied by. Now there was about 3 hours before my baby woke---he always woke about this oclock.

Then I walked into the room in which my baby(Kevin) was sleeping. The curtain was drawn, and the room, in the hot light of a July morning, was not too dark. On the wall was a photo in the cupboard frame which is about 50cm across and 60cm high, and there are two wardrobs in the room, one is old and red, the other is much bigger and white.

I went forwards, stood by the bed-side, bent down and kissed him on his forehead and whispered:”Are you still sleeping, darling? Wake up.”

Kevin did not answer, but smiled comfortably, seem very happy in the large and warm bed next to the wall, on one side of the bed stand a bedside-table, and there is no space for the other to place. In the front of the bed and beside the smaller wardrobe, is a simple clothes-stand on which hang some Kevin’s clothing for the conveniece of use.

I went to the window and opened the curtain, glanced mechanically at the window opposite, through the window, outside, I could see the great cumulus clouds that hung in the sky. Mengdong River flows through Youngshun county(seated in moutianous region), across the river are the mountains brown and bare, in the bed of the river there are pebbles, dry and white in the sun, and the water is clear, and swiftly moving and blue in the channels.

To be continued

Love, Liu