Children who have just grown up with love and longing

We are the generation standing on the border of two eras, the children who have just stepped out of the old countryside with the smell of dry straw and the sound of frogs croaking after each rain shower, and have found themselves in the world of flat screens and cold blue light. We carry within us the uncertainty of those who have just left their homeland - our feet standing in the present but our hearts still lingering somewhere very far away, very old.

Childhood in the countryside - rustic games like hide-and-seek or playing in the sand; catching crabs, fish... become clear memories of a generation.

Our childhood was like the last drops of a dying rain. At that time, if we wanted to contact someone far away, there was no other way but to write a letter by hand, carefully wrap it in a white envelope, affix a stamp and drop it into the yellow mailbox at the commune post office . And, anxiously wait for the reply.

Then, time rolled by, like a waterfall pouring down a steep cliff. Before the ink of handwritten letters faded, we had to get used to the keyboard. Before we could get used to Yahoo, Messenger appeared like magic. Facebook and TikTok came like a flood, sweeping away all the silence. And now, artificial intelligence can speak for you, even speak for thoughts that have not yet been named.

The mornings to school in those days carried the smell of wet earth after a night of rain. We waded through muddy puddles, our plastic sandals were covered in mud, many of them still had a few patchy weld marks from worn heels or broken straps. The plastic school bags slung over our shoulders rattled with each step. We went to school without anyone picking us up, because every village road was a familiar map engraved in our memories.

After school, our world opened up like an endless adventure book. Boys gathered around circles drawn on the ground, their eyes sparkling with the trajectory of rolling marbles.

There were summer afternoons when we lay on the grass, looking up at the kites flying high in the clear blue sky, seemingly wanting to touch the white clouds.

The girls gathered around each other, their laughter as clear as the sound of bells, braiding each other’s hair with faded pink ribbons. And sometimes, the whole group chattered and argued, fighting over each ripe yellow duoi fruit, each young tamarind leaf wrapped with a few grains of white salt, both sour and salty but still strangely delicious.

As the afternoon gradually faded, my mother's call from the porch pulled us away from our games.

By the flickering oil lamp, my mother’s thin face showed every trace of hardship. Her skillful hands sewed old clothes for my sisters and I, each stitch seemed to convey boundless love. My father sat by the old radio, his ears tilted attentively to every word of the radio program, his distant eyes seemed to be drawn into the world of the story.

Those nights, the whole village seemed to vibrate with one heartbeat. The children crowded around the only black-and-white TV in the neighborhood to watch “Little Flowers,” their eyes wide open as if they wanted to absorb every image.

Then, we eagerly counted down the seconds until “Journey to the West”. At one point, the whole group of children sat silently, engrossed in the adventures of Sun Wukong, when suddenly the TV made a crackling sound, the screen flashed with horizontal and vertical lines. The host had to slap the side of the set. The whole group held their breath waiting, when the image became clear again, cheers erupted as if they had just escaped a heart attack.

Time is like a river, sweeping away both childhood and slow days.

One day we woke up to find ourselves in a different place, where everything moves at the speed of light. In our hands were smartphones with powers beyond our childhood sci- fi dreams. But somewhere in our hearts, we still heard the sound of our mother calling our name from the porch as the sun set.

There were late nights, when the city was asleep and only the yellow street lights were shining on the empty streets, we would wistfully remember the afternoons running barefoot on the dirt village roads.

I remember the smell of smoke rising from the roofs of the houses in the neighborhood when the sun set, I remember the sound of children playing and laughing echoing throughout the yard still covered with straw. All of it combined into a simple symphony that, until now, I still find to be the best music of my life.

We are lucky, or perhaps cruel, to live in two parallel worlds at the same time.

On one side is the past with its slow pace of life like concentric circles, simple but profound. On the other side is the present with its global connections, overwhelmingly fast but also fragile, fleeting like smoke.

Between those two worlds, we are like bridge keepers carrying in our luggage childhood memories and traces of a generation that is gradually fading away.

And, when modern life weighs heavily on our shoulders, when messages never stop ringing, when deadlines pile up, we close our eyes to find our childhood. There, time flows slowly like honey, where every moment is experienced with full emotion. Childhood becomes an antidote to tiring days, becomes a silent lighthouse guiding us home when we are lost in life.

Source: https://baothainguyen.vn/van-nghe-thai-nguyen/202508/nhung-dua-tre-vua-kip-lon-len-cung-thuong-nho-4e43ad5/