It's already the end of the year!

Saigon in the last days of the year is a bit chilly, but it has been a long time since winter here has been clear and the weather is pleasant. This is understandable because of the influence of low pressure and storms. The changing weather also makes it impossible for the elderly and children to avoid the cold weather.

In the last days of the year, everyone is busy preparing to welcome the new year, and I - a person living abroad - suddenly feel my heart missing December. December comes to signal the end of the old year, January begins the new year. December retreats to give way to another cycle of three hundred and sixty-five days, and then, we begin a journey that seems long, but is very short: life!

This December, the weather was unusual, with rains every morning and afternoon, leaving many people bewildered. And at the end of the year, floods also caused storms in the North and Central regions, causing much pain. Every year, people in the North and Central regions thought that the last days of the year would be peaceful, so that everyone could hope for a better new year than the previous one, but the rain and storms continued to batter, especially in the South, which had been a long time since they had seen them.

The end of the year is coming to Tet… the train station is bustling with people coming and going, everyone is looking for a ticket to go home for Tet. People who work far away, only get to go home once a year, or many years. Home there is sometimes a shabby house, a corner of the yard with little sunlight, a dry river, a dry land, or a desolate street of stormy rainy days. But you have to go back to smell the smell of home, the smell that only people from the countryside can feel and smell.

Celebrating the Western New Year and then the Vietnamese New Year, this time is often a heartbreaking moment for those who, due to some circumstances, have had to leave their homeland for many years and have no place to return to their birthplace.

My hometown is a hamlet of coconut trees leaning against the harsh north sea winds blowing on the last days of the year, fishermen looking up at the sky, waiting for the sea to “predict the weather for the next 24 hours” to wait for their trips out to sea, a fishing village drifting along with the high and low tides. My hometown is like Saigon, with only two seasons, rainy and sunny, a land that nature generously bestowed a gift of sunshine, wind and sea sand. The people are as gentle as sand, as honest as sand, if they are too poor, they complain to the sky, if they are angry, they can only stomp their feet on the ground, look at the sky and complain…

Thinking about the end of the year and then feeling sad about the end of life. Life, if you think about it, has many endings: the end of the year, the end of the road, the end of the river, the end of life… And if you have to choose one of those endings, people always avoid… the end of life, but even if you avoid it, one day, whether far or near, it will come. If only the end of life could lead to a new life, like the end of the year could lead to a new year, how wonderful that would be! Humans are inherently “greedy for life and afraid of death”, but nature is fair, if humans were immortal, who knows, it would be a disaster for humanity?

At the end of the year, the rows of trees on both sides of the street begin to shed their leaves. The blue sky seems to be bluer, the white clouds seem whiter, only the yellow leaves do not have time to turn yellower. Saigon is crowded with people, and here and there are people from far away, shopping, packing their luggage to have some gifts to bring back to their hometown to worship their ancestors. At the end of the year, people summarize the results, gains and losses, and few people summarize their age, because adding another year to life means taking away a path in life. Knowing that, people still happily look forward to the new year. As for me, at the end of the year, I don't know whether to be happy or sad when I realize that I am another year older?

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