Winter comes, I miss my hometown kitchen.

In the countryside in those days, every house had its own kitchen. Although it was a bit cramped, it was where the whole family, grandparents, parents and siblings, gathered together whenever my mother lit the fire to cook rice. On the stove, three clay pots, their backs slightly bent, leaned together so my mother could cook rice, boil vegetables, and stir-fry dishes. All kinds of firewood, including bamboo branches that my father cut from the thorny bamboo bushes behind the house, were used. Every time they were burned, the firewood would bubble white and make a hissing sound, and the straw and stubble would burn, giving off a pleasant aroma. The smell of cooked rice, the fragrant smell of roasted sweet potatoes, the smell of food, the smell of grilled corn, the fragrant smell of boiled peanuts... made us children crave them, our mouths watering, asking our mother to feed us. On the kitchen loft, my mother often hung all sorts of things, such as baskets, straw brooms... onions, garlic, corn, sticky rice... The whole family of grandparents, grandparents and parents gathered around the red fire to eat rice. After eating, my grandfather and father sat by the freshly brewed teapot, and when poured into the cups, the seductive aroma of the tea spread. We often sat around my grandmother listening to her read the Tale of Kieu, or tell fairy tales. Many of us fell asleep while listening, and some even rolled onto the straw bed that my mother had laid out to sleep...

Nowadays, in modern times, every house has a gas stove, electric stove, electric rice cooker... a bright stove with clean pots and dishes, which has replaced, dominated and helped people with many things. The convenience of the industrial age is like that, but for those who have experienced the poor and backward times of the past, they often remember the past. We have lost the feeling of the warmth of the fire that warmed people's souls for centuries. The memories of childhood with a hard-working mother, full of maternal love. When winter comes, it is cold, no longer possible to wave cold hands over the red fire because of the electric rice cooker, electric stove, no longer the warm stove of a poor time, raising a warm voice, expressing gratitude for the poor past but warm with the love of the Vietnamese countryside. No longer the warm stove, no longer seeing a difficult, dear time, gone forever, it is like a lovely intangible cultural feature of the life of our ancestors.

Winter comes…I miss my mother’s warm kitchen, and my heart is filled with sadness, unable to calm down. There is no more warm kitchen, no more seeing the hard-working figure of my mother. Oh winter! The season of nostalgia, the season of smoke, the season of warmth. No matter how much things change, the warm kitchen is always present in us, with mother’s love, warmly protecting us through difficult times.

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