Let the spring stay

1. I write these lines when spring is “almost over” as the poet Nguyen Binh once said. I know that last night my mother lost sleep, simply because this morning she had to pick white grapefruit flowers for street vendors to sell in the city. If it weren’t for the contributions to her youngest son, she wouldn’t have to do that. When the flower season is over, the fruit will set, and the fruit will hang and sway warmly like a flock of children in front of the house.

The flower season is fleeting like the blinking of a dragonfly, like the gentle flapping of a butterfly, like the tiptoeing of a water-dwelling octopus on the water surface… time is magical and capricious. The farmer admires a season of colorful and fragrant flowers like a mother-in-law who is pleased with her daughter-in-law because of her slender figure, “both skillful in pleasing her husband and skillful in raising her children”. But the flowers are still brilliant, fragrant, and intoxicated with their own spreading power first. Because tomorrow, who knows, unexpected storms and misfortunes may suddenly come…

I remember that when spring comes, each flower will perform on the invisible “stage” in its own way. Flowers will open their buds because of the morning light, flowers will be quiet in the moonlight, flowers will hide under the leaves, flowers will stretch out in the sunlight. However, there are flowers that are only mentioned, picked and placed in crystal vases or ceramic vases, but people will not know what shape their fruit is, how they reproduce to live a wild life for so many years.

And then every spring quietly goes away as it came to this country. Just like that, spring leaves us with opportunities for harvest, opportunities for growth and abundance. And who still remembers that there was a season of colorful flowers, so many scents, full of worries and wind, pouring rain, bustling with butterflies and bees… Let’s live passionately as a natural thing, even though tomorrow each fate will have a different path.

2. In spring, there are countless paths opening up before our eyes. Just yesterday, the cold pushed us to the banks of the eroding river, feeling pessimistic and worried, but now spring is like a dreamy dock, with a ferry waiting for us. As for people in the mountains, wherever there is lush greenery calling, the spring path opens up, wherever we hear birds singing, a beautiful day awaits.

When I was a child, I was immersed in a dream of my own. That magical land was not far away, just a lonely path behind the house, a hill with rocks as big as elephants lying still. I sat on the rocks, watching the buds begin to grow but they had already changed the trees, made the bare land narrower, the sky seemed wider.

One time, my little sister followed me up the hill and said: “I’ve been looking for a whole week but I see nothing has changed on the ground, it’s still the same.” I knew she was busy playing with her friends so she didn’t have the patience and perseverance to follow every little change. This sprout had grown higher than the sharp thorn, that young leaf had taken shape, weeds had filled the footprints and even the broken branches that had dried up.

Later, when I was a middle-aged man with gray hair, I thought about it and secretly admired my mother. As a hyperactive young child, she did not scold me but told me to watch the hills and the garden. Actually, this season the trees had no fruit for birds, mice, squirrels... to come and destroy, so there was no need to watch. Watching was looking forward to, waiting for spring to change everything. Waiting for the miraculous growth of all things. Spring comes and makes plants and all species unusually beautiful. The trees with sharp thorns and old leaves all year round are now young and lush. Even the barren wild plants that seemed like they would burn at the slightest spark suddenly bloomed. Green from day to day, green from garden to garden, mountain to mountain... making my sleep also filled with such green...

I once dreamed that I was lost in a green world, where no tree grew old, they were still gently green, the thorns were also green, the roots were also green and the old leaves when they fell still had that green color. I was awakened by my mother calling me to go to school, but I still felt nostalgic. Perhaps we will never dream again the innocent dream of childhood…

But that summer, my family was no longer here. The dream of the plains that my parents had cherished for so long was realized by a rush truck carrying all kinds of tables, chairs, beds, cabinets… I was like a person who had not yet woken up, just spinning around, passive. Before getting on the truck, I only had time to pick a branch of flowers to bring with me, it was the type of wild flower that I liked the most.

But the stubbornness of the wild cannot resist the laws of time. The branch gradually withered, I dried the leaves and pressed them into my notebook, then the leaves also rotted, life left me nothing. I walked down the stairs, saw my mother sitting there picking vegetables, her hair had long since turned white. It seemed that the black hair of her youth was like the green shoots of life. My mother's soft and silky hair was now awakened by age. I was startled to realize that my green dream, like my innocence, had long since disappeared...

Then I decided to search for that old green dream in paintings. But, when I picked up the brush, my mind was left with only dry thoughts. I pondered for many days and then luckily, through a friend, I bought a small piece of land not far from my old house. On that land, I built a small house, in which the furniture was very simple, with only a fairly large window facing the old house. On what was left, I painted pictures with my emotions, with my dreams. The colors and blocks appeared, I seemed to find the way back to my memories...

Bui Viet Phuong

Source: https://baophapluat.vn/cho-nhung-mua-xuan-o-lai-post543808.html