“What is the ”heart"?
It's the line quietly drawn in the middle of the desk in my youth, the neat handwriting filled stroke by stroke on the exercise book, and the ponytail gently swaying on the way home from school, carrying the fragrance of shampoo. It's the fluttering corner of the clothes during the break when skipping rope, the indelible scent of the sun on the blue and white school uniform, and the half-piece of eraser secretly handed over, concealing the unspoken heart flutter.
It was the bitter winter in Beijing when I was young, or the umbrella shared by two people at the No. 120 bus stop on a rainy day. It's that dilapidated bungalow with trees within the Second Ring Road. It's a freshly baked hot pancake from Chaonei Market. Take a bite and you'll be filled with the warmth of daily life. It was the sudden embrace that burst out from the street corner every time, the Yanjing beer cans that bumped into each other in front of the night market stall, the soft whispers about the future on the bench in the old courtyard in the middle of the night, and that wandering magazine with curled edges, holding the ticket stub of that time.
It's the tension and anticipation of pacing back and forth in the corridor of the obstetrics and gynecology hospital in middle age. It was the soft weight in my palm when I first picked him up, and the smile that melted all my fatigue when he looked at me. It was the instant reddened eyes when he called out “Dad” indistinctly for the first time. It was that sentence hidden deep in my heart - “Thank you for bringing him into this world and saving me as well.”
