The last banh chung for the teacher

The banh chung cake brings back many memories of the third day of Tet.

She was my literature teacher for the four years I was in junior high school in my hometown, the one who was always patient with the mischievous pranks of us "mischievous" teenagers, the one who happily accepted the soaps and face towels wrapped in gift wrapping paper as precious gifts during the holidays from the students. And she was also the first person who made me realize that I loved literature.

We left home, went to college, went to work, and were caught up in the busy, new things of the city. It was a long time before we had the chance to visit our teachers on the occasion of Lunar New Year - the third day of the Lunar New Year. Teachers are not like peach blossoms or apricot blossoms, which return fresh and brilliant every spring. Age and time wait for no one.

That Tet, I eagerly returned to my hometown, wrapped Chung cakes with my father, and stayed up all night to watch the pot of cakes cook. It was the first time I had wrapped Chung cakes myself. On the third day of Tet, I happily brought the most beautiful Chung cake to give to my aunt. The stories continued to drag on over the tea table, it felt like we were only 12 or 13 years old, cycling to school every day under the shade of Royal Poinciana trees in the summer when her hair had not turned grey, her wrinkles were not deep, and her coughs from lung disease were not persistent.

On the third day of Tet, we remember the last banh chung we gave our teacher...

She hadn't peeled the banh chung yet, but she was very happy to receive it from a clumsy student like me. She blurted out, "If you want the sticky rice to be really green, after washing the rice, grind some fresh galangal leaves, take the juice and mix it with the rice before wrapping. Then the boiled cake will be very fragrant, and when peeled, it will be bright green..."

I told my father about her experience. The following Tet, my father and I started experimenting with a new way of wrapping banh chung. We picked fresh galangal leaves, not too young or too old, ground them, filtered the juice and mixed it with washed sticky rice. The first batch of banh chung made that way was unexpectedly delicious.

Peeling off the dong leaves, the banh chung was still green and fragrant, looking appealing. I eagerly picked up the phone to call my teacher, making an appointment to come to her house on the third day of Tet to bring a new banh chung. But the other end of the line only had long beeps, no response… The banh chung on the third day of Tet had not yet reached my teacher.

The family gathers to wrap banh chung. The rice is mixed with fresh galangal leaf water so that when the cake is cooked, the sticky rice is always green.

She had lung cancer. Peach blossoms were blooming bright pink all over the streets of the city. She followed the petals and flew far away. Her name was Tuyet. But she left when spring was still here…

Every year during the following Lunar New Year, my father and I made banh chung. My father planted some galangal bushes in the corner of the garden, just to get the leaves at the end of each year, to mix with rice to make banh chung as my aunt told us.

My teacher, who left us on an unannounced day, but the way she made the Chung cake always green has always followed every member of our family and is continued in the way of making Chung cake of many relatives and friends. Every family's Chung cake is very green. Like our most beautiful memories of our student days, of school, and of her.

I realized that when you truly love someone, the best things about that person will never be lost, even if they are no longer with us…

Source link: https://thanhnien.vn/mung-3-tet-thay-chiec-banh-chung-cuoi-cung-bieu-co-giao-185240211232955194.htm