Life at sea is precarious. In the midst of the storms and waves, there are seasons of success and seasons of failure. Sometimes the sea is rough and my father comes home empty-handed. My mother takes care of the housework, takes care of my grandmother, and raises the children all by herself. All the household expenses, my mother relies on the nets she quietly mends morning and night.
In my childhood memories, the most vivid image is the figure of my mother going early and coming back late to mend the nets every day. Every day, my mother woke up at rooster crow to prepare breakfast for my grandmother and my siblings before rushing to get the nets. On the days when the boats came in, the nets were often torn and rotten, so my mother worked until dark, sometimes coming home at midnight. She couldn’t remember how many years she worked as a fisherman. All I know is that from those days of tirelessly mending nets, going through many rough seas, my mother and my father saved up to build a small house, and raised my siblings and I to study properly.
The job of mending nets is not hard but requires meticulousness and perseverance. And most importantly, you have to sit all day, straining your eyes to find broken or punctured nets to patch. There were nights when my mother came home from mending the net and said her back hurt. As a naive child, I didn’t know anything. When my mother asked me to massage her back, I did it perfunctorily and then ran to the sandbank in front of the house to play with my friends. Only when the waves gradually calmed down at night did I worry about going home, leaving my mother alone with her aching pain. Now that I work far away, every time I hear that the wind has changed and my mother is in pain, I want to run home, buy a bottle of hot oil, and sit and massage her arms and legs, but I can’t. Many times when I call home, my mother says that today the pain is worse, I feel my heart “storming”…
Once I went to see a photo exhibition about my homeland's sea and islands. There was a beautiful picture of a net-repairing scene. Amidst hundreds of floating blue nets like waves crashing in the ocean, a woman sat meticulously weaving with her supple hands. Everyone praised the picture for depicting the beauty of coastal labor. To me, the picture brought back so many emotions. I saw my mother in that picture. And I remembered my mother, the endless days she spent mending nets for hire, saving every penny to take care of the family. Feeling sorry for my mother's hard life, my eyes suddenly stung.
My village has been dependent on the sea for generations. Men go out to sea, women stay home to mend nets and raise children. My mother is the same. The nights waiting for her husband drifting at sea, hearing news of a storm coming, her heart aches. During the "hungry" sea season, worries become heavier on my mother's tired hands mending nets. Through the joys and sorrows, my mother perseveres to mend, sending into each net her prayers for her husband to sail safely and for her children to study properly.
Once I asked my mother why she stuck with the job of mending nets. She answered simply, that it was to keep up with the boats. But I know that to make sure that the uncles, aunts, and brothers can go out to sea with peace of mind, the feelings of the wives and mothers sitting and weaving nets waiting must be very heavy...
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