Tet comes to the path of memories

In just a week, my son and I will be on the flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi to return to my maternal grandparents for Tet. My son is over 2 years old and is learning to talk and is always curious about everything around him. I am eager to let him experience the traditional Tet of a northern village. The closer the return date gets, the more nostalgic I feel for the old Tet days when my family was still poor.

My sisters and I did not know our parents' worries about a warm and full Tet. Children from poor families only looked forward to Tet so they could buy new clothes, eat and drink to their heart's content, and go around wishing each other a happy new year and receive lucky money.

During the days before Tet, my whole village was bustling with cakes and fruits. In addition to banh chung, every family also wrapped banh gai, so on the 27th and 28th of Tet, the children would follow their mothers to line up to grind the flour. In the past, there was no ready-made flour, so mothers had to make cakes from dried gai leaves. I clearly remember my mother sitting in the yard, under the early morning sunlight, meticulously picking out each blade of grass or dry branch mixed in with the leaves. After picking the leaves, my mother would soak them in water overnight to make them swell, then wash them and squeeze out the water, and finally grind them with sticky rice. If banh chung was wrapped in fresh dong leaves, banh gai was wrapped in dried banana leaves. Every year, my mother assigned my sisters and I the task of washing each leaf.

On the day of wrapping the cakes, the whole family gathered on an old mat spread on the sidewalk, surrounded by baskets of leaves, bundles of bamboo strips, pots of flour, fillings, roasted sesame seeds, etc. The eldest sister chose the leaves, the second sister divided the dough, my mother shaped and wrapped the cakes, and my younger sister and I bustled around outside. At the end of the session, dozens of cakes were tied together by my mother in a bamboo strip for easy removal after boiling. My mother mumbled that she counted more than a hundred cakes, and would give a few dozen to my second grandmother’s house in Hanoi, a few dozen to my maternal grandmother’s house to burn incense, and the remaining few dozen to display on the altar at home. So every year after Tet, the walls of the house were covered with strings of sticky rice cakes given by relatives.

On the morning of the 29th of Tet, my father carefully lowered the bronze incense burner and the pair of cranes from the altar and diligently polished them. My sister and I were assigned to clean the dust in the crevices of each decorative motif on the bed that was older than my father. When the golden rays of sunlight penetrated through the gaps of the blinds, carrying countless tiny sparkling particles, and shone on my grandfather's portrait, I squinted and suddenly saw the deceased's faint smile.

Startled, I rubbed my eyes a few times, and in front of me was the vase of chrysanthemums that my mother had just placed on the altar. I told myself that it was my eyes that were seeing things, it was just a picture, how could I smile? Then I hurriedly helped my mother arrange the fruit tray with all the cakes and jams. My mother lit a lighter and lit a coil of incense, and I smelled the scent of the smoke lingering throughout the house, making me feel strangely peaceful. Every New Year's Eve, my sisters and I followed my mother to the pagoda, the fragrant scent of incense emanating from the Buddha statues made the innocent child think that it was the scent of the compassionate Buddha.

On the morning of the first day of the lunar new year, hearing my mother calling from the outer room, my sisters and I stretched out from under the warm peacock quilt, jumping around excitedly to put on new clothes. Just a pair of blue pants and a white shirt worn over warm woolen clothes was enough to make poor children happy to welcome the New Year. My mother told me to buy blue pants and a white shirt that could be worn both for Tet and for school all year. We quickly ate a piece of banh chung with the fragrant smell of new sticky rice and a piece of pork roll that we had been longing for for days, plus a crispy spring roll with meat filling instead of the usual pork rind. I exclaimed, "It's so delicious, Mom." Before we finished our meal, we heard the distant calls from outside the gate, it was my aunts and cousins coming to my house to wish me a happy new year. My sisters quickly put down their bowls and chopsticks, ran out to the yard and chirped to join the group.

The old Tet is now only in my memory, but my family's traditions are still there, though mossy with the changes of the earth and sky. I hope that I can preserve with my children the traditional Tet features of the place where I was born. The older we get, the more we live with nostalgia, always wanting to find the old feeling even though the scenery has changed a lot. I am still in a foreign land but I feel like Tet has come back to the places of memories.

JADE

Ward Thang Tam, Vung Tau City, Ba Ria - Vung Tau

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