The road back to my motherland this season is sunny and vast. Rows of young rice put on a rich green coat on the fields. In the middle of the vastness, white conical hats tilted in the wind, casting their shadows on the alluvial soil of the land. The flying storks are like a thousand musical notes attached to a symphony, which summer has written on the green countryside sky. The wind blows into the nostalgic land the scent of the first young rice of the season, evoking in me so many familiar feelings.
A feeling of excitement suddenly rose from deep within. The day I returned to my mother's hometown, the fields held my steps back, the patches of wild grass weaved white dreams of my youth. At the end of the road was a porch shaded by bamboo, red hibiscus flowers flickered along the path back to memories. Yellow butterfly petals lingered in the hands of people falling in front of the gate, meekly keeping promises to return. My footsteps gently touched the interwoven sunbeams, my heart bursting like when I was a child, I trotted home to my mother's call to eat a home-cooked meal.
In front of the yard filled with the sound of birds, mother attentively spread rice to feed the chickens, the early morning wind blew from the fields gently. The mist slowly dissipated in the banana garden in front of the house, the sunlight penetrated through the dreamy green leaves. The first cries of the day gently echoed from the country road, and the bustling sounds of students in the countryside cycling to school. Mother held a bundle of brooms, bending over to sweep the dry leaves that had fallen the night before, from the small alley around to the back of the house, under the rows of trees with the deep shadow of time.
The sound of my mother’s footsteps was slow and peaceful, as if she were walking among folk songs. Then sometimes my mother would enter my dreams in the windy street attic, with the sound of her footsteps, a lifetime of wading through shallow fields and deep rivers, rain and lightning. In the house next door, someone was letting down a rope to scoop water. A flock of sparrows on the tiled roof were startled very gently, flying one after another through the peaceful smoke and leaves.
My mother's simple hometown has a bamboo bed and an old well. Returning to my grandmother's porch, sitting on the bamboo bed that has been weathered for years, I find myself returning to the summer nights shimmering with falling stars. Seeing my grandmother's silent silhouette at dinner, I silently miss the image of him who has been gone for decades to the misty land.
Slowly walking behind the house to pick up the fallen star fruit flowers, looking at my reflection on the surface of the well water, swaying with the golden sunlight, my soul seemed to be washed away all worries. Memories flowed back softly like cool water, before my eyes appeared the figure of my mother gently washing my grandmother's hair, in the endless, hazy steam.
Grandma followed him to a distant place. Little did I know that the hand she held before leaving the village that day was her last. The corner of the village where I left grandma was filled with tears, the wind blew through the rows of trees standing still and sad. The house was quiet, the hammock was silent beside the closed window.
The lingering scent of essential oils lingers in the minds of those who remain. The old bamboo bed is worn out, the well steps behind the house are covered with purple star fruit flowers that are painfully falling. Mother sits for a long time in her grandmother's house, silently looking through the window. Is it because her heart is aching for her, like when I am far away in the city, my heart also aches for her? Perhaps every child far away from their mother in this world, whether their hair is green in spring or streaked with silver, keeps for themselves an unceasing longing for their mother.
The mother's hometown no longer has its old name. But no matter what, the hometown is still the hometown with all the affection of the flesh and blood. The hometown is still the hometown with the tolerant shadow of the mother, who never stops thinking about her children going back and forth in all directions. With the deep affection in every plowed furrow, clod of soil, blade of grass, in the many stories that the grandmother used to tell every night. With the loving alluvium that seeps deep into every rice field, every river that silts the land. With every beat of the heart that never runs out of the source of loyal humanity, no matter what, it is still intact, fragrant with human love...
TRAN VAN THIEN
Source: https://baovinhlong.com.vn/van-hoa-giai-tri/tac-gia-tac-pham/202506/tan-van-que-me-5180a33/
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