Mom had already woken up, with basins, pots, and buckets to catch the water flowing down from the corrugated iron roof. It was summer but the rain was sudden. In the room, Dad also got up to help Mom cover the room. The room was covered with an old cloth that had also started to get wet from the rain. I don't know how many times like that, how many sudden summer rains it appeared in my own memories.
The brothers and sisters huddled together in a corner of the house to avoid the leaking rain. Mom brought out a thin blanket to cover me and my siblings. Mom wrapped herself in a scarf: Let's go to sleep! That's how we survived, with Mom and Dad's diligence, taking care of all the children. During the rainy days, Mom couldn't make any money selling anything but boiled vegetables, using the water to make soup.
The brothers wanted to grow up quickly, not knowing what to do. They just wanted to grow up quickly to help their mother catch the water flowing down from the small roof. Those were the summers with sudden, midnight rains. Sudden, becoming memories imprinted in the subconscious. When we grow up, everything has to change with time. The old house no longer has to be shaky after rainy nights, making us startled awake. But, every summer there are always rains, low pressure, and storms offshore. It makes people nostalgic, remembering the times when their mother woke up and randomly grabbed a thin blanket to cover them. Their father closed the doors to keep the rain from splashing into the fragile reed house before each night rain. The cement floor was flooded with water, the brothers squatted on their mother's rickety bed.
It's funny, when people grow up as they wish, they want to return to their poor childhood, huddled in a fragile house. They want to see their mother cover herself with a blanket to keep warm. The once mottled cement floor has also become a thing of the past. They want to find the feeling of the past, the sudden summer rainy nights that come and go in their childhood memories. The long, drawn-out rains, their mother soaked in her Ao Ba Ba dress by the fish stall, desolate because of the lack of sales.
Someone, when grown up, may forget many childhood memories. But just by accident, something we encounter will touch many dark corners in the clumsy memories of that time. Longing to wake up in the middle of the night to be covered with an old blanket that still has the smell of the past. Longing to reach out and catch the raindrops falling on the floor. Longing for the warmth of parents, of the difficult days in the rain.
The sudden summer rain seemed to touch the past of no one.
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