My mother's ducks

The day I heard about the storm, I returned from the city to my hometown and insisted on taking a bus to take my mother to the city to avoid the storm. When I moved to the city to make it easier to go to work, my father had passed away, leaving my mother alone in the countryside. I heard that my hometown was located in an area with rising water, so I was worried about my mother, so I insisted on going back to pick her up to stay with me for a few days to wait for the storm to pass.

My mother raised a flock of ducks, which easily amounted to hundreds of ducks. They were both a source of income and friends to my family. My father passed away early, leaving only my mother and I in the small house. The initial flock of ducks, when I was young, was estimated to be more than fifty, but gradually, my mother bred them, and at one point, it grew to several hundred. When I was young, I often helped my mother herd the ducks. When the flock was large, I hired a few people in the neighborhood to help take care of them.

My mother loved the flock of ducks very much. Every time she had to sell them, she would cry, but because of her livelihood, she could not keep them. Thanks to the flock of ducks, my mother had extra money for the market, to raise me, and to send me to school. When we had not sold any eggs and had no money, my mother and I would go pick up eggs to sell at the market or make sausage, boil them... to eat to get through the day. It can be said that my childhood was associated with the flock of ducks, and I grew up and went to university thanks to the flock of ducks.

The day I went to the city to study at university and then go to work, my mother sold more than half of them, several hundred, even the breed, keeping around a hundred because she said she was no longer able to raise them, and I lived far away. But she still had to keep them to make ends meet, and also because she was free, so as long as she could do it and raise it, she would do it. Besides, the house was so lonely, having a flock of ducks, having those sounds would make the house more cheerful…

Then the storm came. My neighborhood was in a low-lying area, and I couldn’t send the ducks away. I hadn’t even finished taking care of myself yet, and I didn’t know where to put my valuable belongings, let alone the flock of ducks, which numbered almost a hundred. The day I returned to “force” my mother to go to the city, the rain had started to pour heavily, the wind was blowing fiercely, trees were starting to fall, a corner of the coop had already tilted, and my mother cried once. I only had time to reinforce a few important places in the house upstairs, and didn’t even have time to pack up, so I just picked up a few things and caught the last bus from the countryside to the city to avoid the storm. My mother looked at the water in the duck coop slowly rising, and the wind was blowing strongly on the trees behind the house, and cried once more.

At midnight, the wind was still howling on the street, the tin roof was banging loudly, that was me taking shelter from the storm in a place that was also temporarily far from home. Mom kept listening to the news on the radio, following the flood situation, seeing the water rising higher and higher, she felt sorry for her hometown, for the people suffering from natural disasters, for the flock of ducks in the countryside and cried...

Bien Bach Ngoc

Source: https://baodongnai.com.vn/dong-nai-cuoi-tuan/202511/bay-vit-cua-ma-toi-c3d305a/