End of year memories

(NB&CL) The calendar on the wall is getting thinner, the dew is gradually covering 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 anyone like me this morning, absentmindedly holding the calendar in the beginning of December, looking out the winter window, seeing the misty sky and missing the distant past?

At the end of the year, I miss the village fields of my childhood very much. The stubble at the end 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 looks like clumsy scribbles on the cold ash-colored sky. When we were children, 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 perch and crabs, some of us went to find soft soil. Then, we lit a fire, molded the soil into perch and crabs, and then dropped them into the year-end fire that was burning wildly in the north wind. When the aroma spread throughout the village, we took out the fish and crabs molded in the soil, knocked out all the soil, and then ate the crabs, the fish cooked fragrantly inside. How sweet and fragrant the grilled crabs and perch were! How warm the straw fire was! All of us had red faces, black mouths, but sparkling eyes, and our laughter 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 in the distant village. I used to watch those storks gradually disappear and wonder where they would fly to, where they would stay in the cold winter days, would they ever return to my village fields, knowing that I had watched and carried in my heart their image throughout the years away from home?

Photo: Khang Chu Long

During the last days of the year, I miss my father a lot. How much I miss and miss his worries and busyness at the end of the year! At the end of the year, my father goes to the bamboo hedge around the house, looking for bamboo clumps with chopped stems, leaving only stumps with jagged cuts, to hit the bamboo shoots with bristling roots. His strong, muscular body and hands strain to lift the heavy hammer and use all their strength to hit the dry bamboo shoots. After a few days, a corner of the yard was filled with piles of dry bamboo shoots. No other type of firewood is better than dry bamboo shoots to cook banh chung. My father always said 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 awaited our portion of sweet potatoes and grilled meat skewers. That sweet, 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 flows in, the ditch is full of water, clear as a mirror. On the ditch bank, women often sit washing clothes, scrubbing household items or rubbing dong leaves, banana leaves or washing sticky rice, green beans to prepare to wrap cakes, make sausages. Children also follow their mothers and sisters to the ditch bank, working and playing happily.

The year-end stories always revolve around the preparation for Tet, buying clothes for the children, the market, prices, farming, and how to plant and harvest after Tet. The sound of laughter and chatter along the canals, connecting to the village roads and alleys, creates 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 back then has now entered my fifties, and I increasingly miss the old days. Thinking back to the past, I often ask myself vague questions. If economic life were more abundant and prosperous, would spiritual life be more beautiful? Would Tet be warmer and happier? Why do I always miss Tet from 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 passing year is a memory worth keeping in one's life. Is that right?

Nguyen Van Song

Source: https://www.congluan.vn/thuong-nho-cuoi-nam-post331237.html