(NB&CL) The calendar on the wall is getting thinner, the dew is gradually filling the fields every morning, that is when the year is over and the heart is filled with more and more nostalgia and longing. The year-end nostalgia is always full of memories and self-questioning. Is there anyone like me this morning, absentmindedly holding the calendar in the beginning of December, looking out the winter window, seeing the sky full of mist and smoke, missing the distant past?
At the end of the year, I miss the village fields of my childhood very much. The last stubble of the year in the middle of the windy fields looks so rustling, skinny and pitiful. The stubble has dried up to the very end after the harvest and after many storms, wind and rain. The dry stubble is like clumsy scribbles on the cold ash-colored sky. When I was a child, we loved to herd buffaloes in the last days of the year in the fields. We let the buffaloes graze and then split into small groups.
Some of us went to pull up dry stubble and pile it up, some of us blocked a small ditch and used both hands to search for tilapia and giant crabs, some of us went to find soft soil. Then, we lit a fire, molded the soil into tilapia and crabs, and dropped them into the year-end fire that was burning fiercely in the north wind. When the aroma spread throughout the village, we took out the crabs and fish molded in the soil, knocked out all the soil, and ate the crabs, the fish cooked fragrantly inside. How sweet and fragrant the grilled tilapia and crabs were! How warm the straw fire was! All of our faces were red, our mouths were black but our eyes were sparkling, our laughter and chatter echoed forever in the village's memories.
Missing my hometown, I also miss the storks flying up in the afternoon fields and then gradually disappearing towards the distant village. I used to watch those storks gradually disappear and wonder where they would fly to, where they would stay during the cold winter days, would they ever return to my village fields, knowing that I had watched and carried their image in my heart throughout the years away from home?
Photo: Khang Chu Long
During the last days of the year, I miss my father a lot. I miss and miss his worries and busyness at the end of the year so much! At the end of the year, my father goes to the bamboo hedge around the house, looking for bamboo clumps with chopped stems, only the stumps with jagged cuts left, to hit the bamboo shoots with many roots. His strong body and strong arms lift up the heavy hammer and use all their strength to hit the dry bamboo shoots. After a few days, the pile of bamboo shoots fills a corner of the yard. No other type of firewood is better than dry bamboo shoots to cook banh chung. My father often says so.
My siblings and I often sat around my father, around the pot of banh chung in the kitchen, watching the fire and adding water to the pot. My father buried sweet potatoes or grilled salted meat skewers in the stove. We sat listening to my father tell stories about Tet in the distant, poor days when he was a child and eagerly waited to share the sweet potatoes and grilled meat skewers. That sweet and warm aroma and atmosphere remained in my heart forever as a symbol of memory and happiness.
I also often miss the ditch in the field behind my house in the last days of the year. At that time, the water was pouring in, the ditch was full of water, clear as a mirror. On the ditch, women often sat washing clothes, scrubbing household items or rubbing dong leaves, banana leaves or washing sticky rice, green beans to prepare to wrap cakes, wrap pork rolls. Children also followed their mothers and sisters to the ditch, working and playing happily.
The stories at the end of the year always revolve around the preparation for Tet of each family, buying clothes for the children, the market, prices, farming stories, how to plant and harvest after Tet. The sound of laughter along the canals, connecting to the village roads and alleys, brings a very special atmosphere of the countryside on the days before Tet.
The Tet market on the last day of the year is imbued with the flavor of the homeland. Photo: Khang Chu Long
Many years have passed. The child that I was, I am now in my fifties, and I increasingly miss the old days. Thinking back to the past, I often ask myself vague questions. Would a more prosperous and abundant economic life make my spiritual life more beautiful? Would Tet be warmer and happier? Why do I always miss the Tet of a long time ago? But then I tell myself, even the moment called today will gradually become the past, gradually become sweet memories of the distant future. Every year that passes is a memory worth keeping in one's life. Isn't that right?
Nguyen Van Song
Source: https://www.congluan.vn/thuong-nho-cuoi-nam-post331237.html
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