After graduating from university, I found a job in a government agency and settled down in the dreamy city of Da Lat. Therefore, my small family has not used a wood stove for many years.
The firewood stove and the smoke from the bamboo stove in the afternoon drifting from the kitchen in the thatched roof house in the countryside during the winter days are still intact in my mind every time I remember. In the early eighties of the last century, at the end of the year; not only my family, but most families in the same district of Ham Thuan Nam, no matter what they did, every family prepared a pile of firewood on the sidewalk to serve the fire during the Tet holidays.
Firewood is used for cooking and drinking water every day. Firewood is used to light the kiln for roasting popcorn, burning the kiln for making rice cakes; cooking banh chung, banh tet; stewing meat, stewing bamboo shoots... and for everything that needs fire to cook. I remember at the end of the year, the fathers and brothers in the family arranged for 2 to 3 days; preparing rice, fish sauce, dried fish to bring with them a pair of oxen, carts into the forest to collect firewood. Every afternoon around 3-4 o'clock, the oxcarts headed straight towards the mountains and forests. Group after group, dust flew up until the carts disappeared from the village's sight. Once when I was on leave from school, my father let me go along to herd cows, I was very happy and I still remember those trips to this day. I don't know how far the road was, but places like Ba Bau, Ba village, Ham Can, My Thanh, Suoi Kiet, Dan Thung, Ruong Hoang... were places where people often came to get firewood to bring back. The firewood brought back is dry wood, selected straight, cut off the ends, cut off the tails about 4 to 6 meters long, with a diameter of 30cm or more. Most of the wood is burnt, because people burn the fields when the trees are still fresh. Each truck can only carry a maximum of 10 to 15 firewood, depending on the length and size. There are years when my father goes into the forest to collect firewood 3 to 4 times to store for cooking during the rainy season of the following year. Moreover, at the end of the year, in addition to collecting firewood, people in my hometown also go to the forest to pick tamarinds to use in making green rice flakes, making jams, and dried tamarinds to cook sour soup, make tamarind fish sauce... In addition, they also look for and cut down yellow apricot branches to bring back, pick the leaves, burn the roots and soak them in water until Tet to bloom and display in the house.
As for us, we sawed the firewood that our father brought home into small pieces, about 40 cm long; then used hammers and machetes to cut it into 5 or 7 pieces and put them in the kitchen for our grandmother and mother to cook. Memories of a peaceful countryside bordering Phan Thiet town make me miss the last winter months of the year when we were poor. I can never forget the image of my father painstakingly selecting straight, dry firewood and especially choosing wood that could keep the fire for a long time, with little smoke, gathering them into bundles and bringing them by oxcart to transport them home. In the last days of the year, the forest grass had dried up, some places had been burnt; the buffaloes and cows only ate handfuls of dry straw that their owners brought and drank the remaining muddy water from the stream to have the strength to pull the cart of firewood home.
Life has changed, from the city to the countryside, every house has replaced the wood stove with a gas stove, electric stove, pressure cooker, rice cooker, electric kettle, microwave oven... Now, although my siblings and I have bought our mother a gas stove, an electric rice cooker, she still keeps the stove with 3 Tao gods burning with wood. She collects dry coconut leaves, splits them into small pieces to boil water, cook medicine; sometimes braises fish, cooks rice when necessary. She often tells her children: "Every time I sit next to the 3 Tao gods to gather firewood, I see the image of my grandmother and my beloved husband in the flickering firelight; then tears flow alone, I don't know if it's because of the smoke stinging my eyes or because I miss my loved ones". When I go back to my hometown to visit my family, sitting next to my mother, I love the smell of smoke from the stove where my mother boils water. The fire burning from the firewood is so passionate. The fire of love from my grandmother, my mother, and my father that raised my siblings and me to adulthood still burns in my memories and follows me almost my entire life.
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