Daylilies on the Steps

Daylilies on the Steps Plot:

Su Xiaotang, an advertiser who has been away from home for years due to work, rushes back to her old courtyard only after her father says, "Your mom's daylilies are dying." Pushing the door open, she finds her mother—who has Alzheimer's—squatting on the hall steps, watering the daylilies with trembling hands and muttering, "Xiaotang will want mung bean soup after school." Her mother has forgotten the adult her, but remembers the 12-year-old Xiaotang vividly. Sorting through杂物, Xiaotang finds a stack of yellowed notes under the daylily pot: her childhood promise, "Mom, I want to be a painter," which she abandoned for overtime. When she picks up her dusty paintbrush again to draw her mother's profile beside the daylilies, her mother stares at the painting and smiles: "Did Xiaotang draw this? It looks just like me when I was young." The daylilies on the steps sprout new shoots, just like the love she'd ignored—never really gone.