Mom blew smoke away from dinner

Afternoon. We stopped on patrol after a long journey along the border. Under the endless canopy of the towering palm trees, a feeling of relaxation and gentleness suddenly rushed in, pushing all the tiredness down to our feet and then disappearing. The scenery was so peaceful. On the other side of the border, a Khmer house was built right on the edge of a rice field. Blue smoke from the kitchen crept up from the thatched roof, winding mysteriously before disappearing into the blue sky.

The conversation of the border patrol team, which was full of jokes and wit, suddenly became dull. Someone said: “This smoke is like the smoke from our hometown kitchen!”. Suddenly, memories of our childhood came flooding back, making us feel nostalgic and wistful. The whole team suddenly became silent, each person suddenly lost in thought.

At that time, our hometown was poor. Poverty during a difficult time. Parents had to worry in advance, plan for everything in advance, hoping that the kitchen in the house would be on fire a couple of times a day. After the harvest, when the last grains of rice from the rice fields and on the village roads were picked up, my sisters and I would carry our “shoulder poles” to pick up each stubble lying curled up on the white, fallow furrows. The stubble was pounded, the dirt was shaken off, dried, and used to cook rice gradually.

My hometown is in the middle of the delta, the red fire for the poor meal is often lit from straw and stubble. The straw is golden and fragrant. If it is sticky rice straw, it is used to weave brooms, make strings to tie the squash and gourd trellis, and if it is regular straw, it is used as food reserve for rainy days, cold winter nights of the plowing buffaloes. There is very little firewood so it is only used for death anniversaries or when absolutely necessary.

Nowadays, even in my hometown, probably no one uses straw to cook rice. And maybe in the future, few people will know how to distinguish between straw and stubble. Straw is the lower half of the rice plant, after it has been harvested. The top part, after the rice grains have been stripped away, is called straw. Straw is born first, starting from the young rice shoots. Over many days and months, the rice plant clings tightly to the soil and water, carefully and devotedly giving all its nutrients to the rice flower to offer the world plump, fragrant rice grains. After fulfilling its duty, the straw falls apart and rots. Before turning into ashes to fertilize the soil, the straw devotes its last bit of energy, burning up into a flame to make the kitchen fragrant.

Mother's life was like the life of rice. Through many hardships, sunshine and rain, mother took care of life with endless golden seasons, giving us fragrant people. At over twenty years old, mother became a daughter-in-law of her husband's family. Both her paternal and maternal families were poor, so her parents' personal assets were only two copper pots, three pairs of breeding chickens and a few dozen kilos of rice. They had no capital, and their cooperative work points were low, so even though they "worked hard from midnight until dark, the family could only afford two simple meals.

That year, in the middle of the summer crop, my mother contracted to plant several hectares of rice fields for the production team. During the whole crop, my father followed the cooperative plowing team, working in fields near and far, following the buffaloes to plow, collecting every bit of work. My mother alone had to raise her children, do housework, and work in the fields. She ate irregularly, raced with work, and had to stay up at night to fan her children. Because whenever she stopped fanning, my second brother would cry. My mother's arms were limp, her eyes were dark, and she lacked sleep.

One late afternoon, my father returned from herding buffaloes in the fields. As soon as he reached the door, he suddenly stopped. In the dim light and smoke, my mother lay unconscious in the middle of the kitchen. Sweat poured from her body like a shower, her face pale. My eldest sister and second brother, who were just five and three years old, cried beside her in fear. My mother still held the basket in her hand. Vegetables were scattered everywhere on the straw and on the stove. Calm as when they were on the battlefield during the war against the Americans, my father shook her, pulled her hair, and massaged her for a long time before she slowly regained consciousness...

It turned out that my mother was so weak that she could only eat half a rice bowl and a sweet potato to fill her stomach after planting rice all day. Although she was very tired, she still tried to prepare dinner, so that it would be on time for my father to come home to eat, and in the evening she would go to Cun Cut stream to catch loach. While cooking rice, boiling water, and cooking pig feed, my mother pounded the "crabs" she had just caught while planting rice. "Two hands in the kitchen and pounding crabs", doing two or three things at once. When my mother finished burying the rice pot and stood up to wash the vegetables, her face suddenly darkened and she fell down on the kitchen. Luckily, my father had just returned in time. Then he went to the commune health station to buy medicine to inject for my mother. With a little knowledge of military medicine from the days in the Truong Son forest, my father had treated all the illnesses of the whole family. Despite her illness, my mother only stayed home for one day to rest and take medicine, and at dawn the next day she went back to the fields to pull up the rice seedlings and plant rice as usual.

On the small plot of land allocated, in addition to two rice crops, my parents intensively cultivated each season. There were even intercropped crops such as watermelon, cantaloupe, corn, beans, etc. planted in the early-planted rice rows, to catch up with the next season. My mother used the fallow land, pond banks, water troughs and the small home garden to grow all kinds of vegetables, tubers and fruits. My parents also raised many types of poultry from small to large and a pond full of fish, feeding them grass and bran every afternoon. A small portion of the yield was used for daily living, while the majority was used to sell at the market, improving the family economy .

Just like that, my parents saved from rice grains, potatoes, chickens, ducks,... the family life became more and more prosperous. When I was born, my parents were able to build a house, three rooms with red tile roofs, two rooms with flat roofs, quite beautiful in Dun Noi village. On the day the pillars were erected and the roof was raised, my grandfather wrote a pair of parallel sentences for his children to place on both sides of the bridge. The Vietnamese characters were written in a winding, soaring calligraphy style: "Kiêm can tu tu chi - Sáng tạo hợp tân cơ".

My grandfather explained that: Take thrift and diligence as the motto of life - (but also know how to) be creative to build a new career. Until the early two thousand years, the house was still very sturdy before being replaced with a new flat-roofed house to suit the new life.

For more than twenty years, I have been away from home. Thanks to my work, I have traveled to almost every region in the country, and have enjoyed the cuisine of many places with different cultural characteristics; I have also been to restaurants, parties, and delicacies. But the best meals in my life are still the meals my mother cooked. Delicious meals from my childhood, deeply ingrained in my subconscious and throughout my life.

In July of that year, a terrible storm from the East Sea swept into my hometown, taking away almost all the crops of the summer-autumn crop that was about to be harvested. Since the afternoon of the previous day, when the storm was about to hit, my whole family packed up their mats, blankets, and belongings into two rooms, which were usually used as storage rooms for rice, because they were stuffy and hot. After dinner, the storm gradually grew stronger, and the trees in the front yard began to sway. At midnight, the storm's eye arrived. Through the window, I heard the wind howling continuously, the sound of objects flying, and the painful crackling of trees breaking. The mother and children, along with the dogs and cats, huddled next to the rice baskets, waiting for the storm to pass. My father was outside the tent, immersing himself in the storm and wind to shore up the pond's banks, in case the water rose and broke, and the fish would swim away. The storm lasted like a monster in a fairy tale.

The next afternoon, the storm passed, and my mother and I dared to open the door of the room a little and crawl out. It was about three or four o'clock in the afternoon. The sky was gray and gloomy. The scene was devastated and desolate. Almost all the tiled roofs of the three rooms had been blown away, and the trees in the garden were tilted. The largest eucalyptus tree by the pond had fallen backwards, lying in the middle of the garden, crushing the guava and orange trees laden with fruit. The pigsty was flooded, and two young pigs ran out and tore up the vegetable beds and holes in the ground in search of food. A flock of mother and baby chickens huddled on tree branches, their feathers tangled together, sticking to their skin, shivering.

My sisters and I helped my father clean the house, while my mother cooked dinner. The straw pile was tilted in the middle of the alley, soaking wet. Luckily, the straw pile had not been blown off its roof, but it was still crooked, with wet and dry stalks. My mother moved the three vegetable heads to the corner of the house, where the water was not flowing. The wind was still fierce, the rain was gradually fading but still blowing continuously. Blue smoke slowly crept up. My mother covered all sides, struggling to keep the fire from going out. But the straw was wet, the rain was windy, the fire was flickering, flickering in the billowing smoke all around. By the time the rice pot was dry, my mother's face was covered in dust and ash, tears and snot streaming down her face. There was not enough warm ash to bury the rice pot, so my mother arranged dry straw stumps around the pot, piled up the straw, and blew on the fire. Because it was still raining, the smoke could not escape, the smoke gathered on the roof and then drifted back, filling the kitchen. The smoke was thick and black, stinging my eyes.

Finally, the pot of rice and the steamed eggs were cooked. After a day of fasting, the bowl of rice was hot, filled with the fragrant smell of smoke and ash. The only food was boiled water spinach dipped in duck eggs with fish sauce and chili peppers, which was more delicious than ever. Wherever the rice went, all the hunger, thirst, fatigue, and coldness disappeared. It was true to the proverb “warming every part of the intestines”.

Mom only ate one bowl and then watched the whole family eat in silence. Mom filled the bowl of rice, and added a piece of egg yolk to my bowl. As always, Mom always saved the best piece for her husband and children. Mom said, “Eat slowly, don’t choke.” I saw tears welling up in Mom’s eyes, filled with sadness. Mom looked at me with caressing, loving eyes. Mom’s happiness throughout her life was taking care of her husband, her children, and later, her grandchildren.

I have been in the army, far from home, far from my mother for many years, but that simple meal in the rainy afternoon is still delicious and warm in my life. And then, every time I look at the blue smoke in the afternoon, no matter where I am, the image of my homeland in difficult days, the image of my mother who worked hard all her life, worrying about her children's every meal and piece of clothing, appears in my subconscious: "The smoke from my mother's evening meal - From thousands of years ago, it still fills my eyes"./.

Nguyen Hoi

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