My mother's flock of ducks

On the night of the storm warning, even though we were safely sheltered in a storm shelter, Mom was still crying. When I asked her why, she sadly said, "I feel so sorry for the ducks; they're all going to die in this water." Hearing her say that, my heart ached...

The day I heard about the storm, I rushed back to my hometown from the city, insisting on taking my mother to the city to escape the storm. When I moved to the city for work, my father had already passed away, leaving my mother alone in the countryside. I heard that my hometown is in a flood-prone area, and no matter what, I was worried about her, so I was determined to bring her to stay with me for a few days until the storm passed.

My mother raised a flock of ducks, easily numbering in the hundreds, which were both a source of livelihood and like friends to my family. My father passed away early, leaving only my mother and me in our small house. When I was little, the flock initially numbered around fifty ducks, but gradually my mother bred them, and at one point, the number reached several hundred. As a child, I often helped my mother herd the ducks; when the flock grew large, we would hire a few neighbors to help care for them.

My mother loved the ducks very much. Every time they reached maturity and she had to sell them, she would sit and cry, but she couldn't keep them because of the need to make a living. Thanks to the ducks, my mother had extra money for groceries, to raise me, and to pay for my education. On days when we couldn't sell them and didn't have money, my mother and I would collect eggs to sell at the market or make meatballs, boil them, etc., to eat to get by. It's safe to say that my childhood was intertwined with the ducks, and I was able to go to university thanks to them.

When I went to the city to study at university and then started working, my mother sold more than half of them, hundreds of ducks, including the breeding stock, keeping only about a hundred because she said she couldn't raise them anymore, and I was far away. But she still had to keep them to make ends meet, and also because she had free time and could still work and raise them, so she continued to do so. Besides, the house was too lonely; having a flock of ducks, with their sounds, brought joy to the home…

Then the storm came. My village was low-lying, so we couldn't send the ducks to a safe place. We were barely able to take care of ourselves, and we didn't know where to put our valuable belongings, let alone a flock of easily a hundred ducks. The day I went home to "force" my mother to go to the city, the rain had already started to fall heavily, the wind was raging, trees were beginning to fall, a corner of the coop had tilted, and my mother cried once. I only managed to reinforce a few important parts of the house upstairs; I didn't even have time to pack up our belongings, just grabbed a few things and caught the last bus from the countryside to the city to escape the storm. My mother watched the water slowly rise in the duck coop, the strong wind whipping the trees behind the house, and cried again.

At midnight, the wind still howled through the streets, the corrugated iron roofs rattled loudly, and I had taken refuge from the storm in a place temporarily far from home. My mother listened to the news on the radio, following the flood situation, and every time she saw the water rising rapidly, she felt sorry for our homeland, for the people suffering from the natural disaster, and for the flock of ducks back home, and she cried...

Bien Bach Ngoc

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