Touch the memory of time

During my childhood in the countryside, every time I came home from school or from playing, the first thing I did was run straight to the kitchen, open the cupboard door to see if my grandparents or parents had left anything for me, sometimes a bowl of boiled potatoes, sometimes a piece of cassava cake, or later a bowl of simple noodles. The cupboard, for us children, was the “treasure” of childhood, a place to keep simple joys and sweet happiness from the hands of adults. I still remember the mischievous puppies or tabby cats happily welcoming their owners from the bamboo hedge at the end of the lane when they saw their owners coming home from school. They ran after me, then hurriedly led me into the kitchen, meowing and wagging their tails as if urging me: “Master, please open the cupboard, there is delicious food!” When I opened the door, the warm aroma of potatoes and cassava cake spread out. I shared some with them.

The author with a cupboard in old Hanoi .

During those difficult years, the cupboard mainly contained only a few clay pots, rough cast iron pots, baskets, a few small jars of fish sauce, pickles, a jar of salt or a bottle of fish sauce. The food storage compartment was very poor: there was only a bowl of salt, sometimes a pot of salted shrimp. Only during Tet did we have a pot of minced pork ribs with bones fried with salt - the most "luxury" dish of the year. The most well-off families had a tiny jar of MSG, or a bowl of pork fat.

Meals in those days were simple: boiled garden vegetables, soup, sometimes with crabs, mussels or fish caught while working in the fields. Stir-fried dishes were rare, because there was no oil like today. Therefore, the cupboard did not have much leftover food for the next meal, as its function was. The cupboard was both a place to store miscellaneous things in times of poverty and a symbol of thrift and hard work. Figuratively speaking, it was like a poor mother in the kitchen corner taking care of the warmth of the roof. In the city, the attic was made of sturdy wood, with partitions, mosquito nets, and water bowls to prevent ants, while the cupboard in the countryside was made of simple bamboo. Over the years, it became crooked and shabby, but no one could bear to abandon it. In the corner of the kitchen covered with black smoke, the cupboard was a close friend of the hard-working women who toiled day and night.

For kids like me, the space under the cupboard was a mysterious world : a place where tabby cats lay to warm themselves in the winter, where the golden cats rested their snouts waiting for meals, and also where I would tiptoe to open the creaking bamboo door to find something to eat. I always remember the time when my family moved to a poor working-class neighborhood. At noon, after school, everyone’s stomach was growling with hunger, their school bags dragging on the road. Before I could put them down, I rushed into the kitchen, opened the cupboard to find food that the adults had saved. Usually, it was a small bowl containing a fist-sized lump of boiled dough - a thick, unfilled “poor man’s dumpling” with a strong smell of tapioca starch. Yet we still ate it deliciously, dipped in salt water, feeling how warm life was despite the hardship!

As time goes by, when refrigerators and modern kitchen cabinets appear in every family, the old cupboard gradually fades into the past. But in the memories of many people, it is still a nostalgic corner, a witness of the poor but warm and loving times. In many mountainous areas, where life is still lacking, the bamboo cupboard is still present as a diligent friend, preserving old habits.

Every time I think about the cupboard, my heart is filled with excitement - the pure emotions of my childhood, where just opening the creaking bamboo door brings back a whole sky of memories, the smell of kitchen smoke and my mother's call...

DUONG MY ANH

Source: https://baokhanhhoa.vn/van-hoa/sang-tac/202511/cham-vao-ky-uc-thoi-gian-67f14e2/