The bustling sunny season

I returned to the village on an early summer afternoon. The golden sunlight spread on the old thatched roof, sparkling like dust particles of memories. There was only the sound of the wind gently passing through the leaves, carrying the dry heat of the sunny season of years past.

Illustration photo (AI)

I returned to the village on an early summer afternoon. The golden sunlight spread on the old thatched roof, sparkling like dust particles of memories. There was only the sound of the wind gently passing through the leaves, carrying the dry heat of the sunny season of years past. The smell of burnt grass, dry soil, newly dried straw,… I thought had faded with the years, but today it came back to life strangely clear.

I just wandered through the old roads, where the bare, sunburned footprints of a time of inexperience had been imprinted. The red dirt roads, cracked in the dry season, muddy in the rainy season, but back then, we still considered it the whole world , a place where we could face up to the rain, run bare-chested, letting the sand and dirt cling to us. I used to sit for hours, scribbling on the ground with bamboo sticks, drawing naive dreams that I didn’t know how to name, then giggling to myself when it was about to rain. My friends from that time, the mischievous Phong, the crying Huong, the dark-skinned Ty who ran as fast as a squirrel, have now scattered to different places. Some of them I still keep in touch with, some of them seem to have drifted completely out of the cycle of memories. Only I am left, walking among the familiar paths that have faded, carrying with them fragments of memories that I haven’t had time to put into words. There is a feeling that is very quiet, very clear, like a murmuring underground stream - a feeling that only those who grew up in the sunny and windy countryside can understand. This year's sunny season, I am no longer the boy of the past. My shoulders are heavy with worries, my steps have stopped bouncing, but strangely, in the midst of this golden and quiet countryside sunshine, something inside me is stirring again, a vague, fragile vibration like the sound of cicadas on the canopy of leaves that only the sunny season of the countryside can awaken.

On the banks of the dry rice fields, children still run and jump, their small feet imprinted on the cracked ground like innocent exclamation points of childhood. The clear laughter, resounding far in the sunlight, echoes like a vague call from the past, the call of the days when I was a child, also running in the dry rice fields, chasing dragonflies, clinging to every moment of summer. I remember my grandmother, her thin figure sitting on the small porch, waving a palm leaf fan with worn edges. In the hot summer afternoon, her voice told the story of Tam Cam, the story of the star fruit tree, as light as the midday breeze passing by. I remember my mother, a hard-working woman with her hair neatly tied up, sitting mending clothes on the brick steps, needle and thread nimbly in her hands. Drops of sweat on her forehead, mixed with the yellow sunlight, fell onto the hem of the shirt she was sewing. My mother's eyes at that time were so gentle, but also reflected so much worry - a look that I only learned to understand much later. I remember the cracked clay pot where my mother used to brew green tea every afternoon. The tea scent was not strong but it was enough to penetrate my heart like a peaceful habit. The smell of smoke from the kitchen in the afternoon clung lightly to my mother's hair, to my shirt, to every breeze blowing through the fence... That was the smell of the countryside, the smell of peace that no matter where I went, I could not find again, except right here, in my simple and quiet memories.

This year's sunny season, my heart suddenly feels more deeply than ever the quiet bustle of time. The sunshine of the countryside not only dries the thatched roof, the brick yard, the clothes hanging on the line,... but also dries the memories that I thought I had forgotten. The scent of the sunshine mixed with the scent of dry soil, the scent of straw left over from the previous harvest, all blend into a rustic harmony, a song that only those who have lived through the old seasons can hear.

I felt the cracks in the ground stirring, awakening the summers that had fallen asleep in my memory. Sitting under the old banyan tree at the village entrance, I reached out to catch a ray of sunlight swaying between the leaves. This banyan tree used to be the whole childhood world of me and Tham, my neighbor with black eyes and a voice as crisp as the sound of cicadas at noon. We used to sit here, sharing a bag of dried apricots and competing to count the fallen banyan fruits. One day when it suddenly rained, the two of us sat huddled together under the thick canopy of leaves, Tham softly said: "I wish that someday, when we grow up, we can still sit here like this." I still remember that wish clearly, but Tham had moved away with her family a long-ago summer. The banyan tree is still here, the canopy of leaves is still green, shading the sun like before, only the two children are no longer sitting next to each other.

The sun made me squint, but in that bright light, I saw my childhood smiling. A small, peaceful smile amidst the hustle and bustle of the sunny season./.

Linh Chau

Source: https://baolongan.vn/xon-xao-mua-nang-a198117.html