The cotton tree flowers burn my heart…

The rice tree at the village entrance. Photo: Le Minh.

The cotton tree at the beginning of Gio hamlet is big and rough, its roots arching upwards, splitting into many branches, digging into the ground like a giant hand digging into the homeland soil. When asked by adults, when the tree was first planted, the answer was always “I saw it when I grew up”. And I, since I could run out to the village roads and alleys, have seen the cotton tree.

The tree trunk has rough, moldy skin, covered with green moss, and occasionally has bumps the size of a student's fist.

The four seasons and eight solar terms rotate, when spring comes, the “oldness” of the tree disappears, from the bare branches begin to sprout the first few buds, then thousands of young buds like thousands of green candles light up, sparkling in the sunlight, welcoming flocks of red-whiskered bulbuls, starlings, black-throated starlings… flying back in droves. On a sunny day at the end of March, looking up, one can see the bright red cotton flowers like giant torches burning in the blue sky.

The bustling atmosphere of people around the small shop still covered the rice shade, making the canopy of leaves sway, making the flowers smile. Especially in the flower season, the boys came out to play marbles, the girls played hopscotch on the ground where the red bricks had peeled off.

Bored with playing, the group lay down, their heads on the green grass at the base of the tree, and watched the flower petals falling and spinning in the wind. The flowers fell, but the thick petals were still bright red like they were full of water, and felt heavy in the hand because of the thick green calyx.

We gathered a large number of flowers and strung them into chains, taking turns carrying them in front while the rest of us ran around the base of the tree, our cheeks red and sweaty, until sunset fell, the children's shadows blended into the purple twilight, and then we dispersed.

No child could climb this kapok tree because its trunk was too big to hug and reached the sky. Only adults could conquer its height and find a fork of the tree, place a thick plank tied with buffalo rope across it, and use it as a “loudspeaker station”. Sometimes the village chief, sometimes the guerrilla militia leader, sometimes the person in charge of the popular education class… held a tin loudspeaker, starting with a sound that echoed throughout the hills: “Speaker… loudspeaker… loudspeaker…”, then broadcast information about the village’s business situation, such as the harvest season, increased work in exchange for labor, or during the flood season, information about the weather, whether it would rain or be dry.

From this rice tree, many bulletins were sent out calling on young men to join the army. The guerrilla militia leader announced many news about the team's training period and reminded every household about security and order, and to avoid chicken and pig theft.

My eldest brother used a rope tied to his two ankles as a climbing aid to climb up, sat upright on the plank at the fork and broadcast the mass education bulletin, calling on everyone who was illiterate to go to school to learn to read and write fluently, or sometimes change the study location from Mr. Ky's house to Mrs. Mo's house; the class was from noon to evening... I followed him to mass education school, so after just a little bit of learning, I "jumped" right into first grade at the village school.

And the feeling of home gradually grew over the years with the red flowers. The countryside was so beautiful, so peaceful, but the poor countryside, looking at the cotton flowers, made me worry about the famine of the lean season - March 8th. The rice of the previous crop was much less by the end of January, my mother said, the most frightening thing was the ear-piercing and creepy "squeaking" sound of the tin milk carton hitting the side of the jar when scraping the rice to cook. When the rice ran out, there was cassava, but eating cassava all the time made me feel hungry, everyone craved rice.

With six siblings in the family, the worry of food and clothing weighed heavily on our parents’ shoulders. When I thought about the kapok flower, I kept wondering, why does this flower have the same name as the main food of the Vietnamese people? Why does it bloom during the lean season? Let it bloom in another season to ease the pain…

But perhaps the name rice also has a hidden meaning, when the cotton flower falls and withers, the rice fruit takes shape, grows and stays on the tree until it is ripe and blooms into a fluffy white cotton ball, just like a pot of fragrant white rice, expressing the farmer's dream of a prosperous life, so the tree is named "rice"?

But each region has a different name for the flower, associated with its own legend. The northern mountainous region calls the cotton tree flower "moc mien", the Central Highlands calls it "po-lang".

In February 1979, from the beginning of the Northern border war, I followed the army to write articles in Cao Loc district, Lang Son , looking at the tattered kapok flowers in the border area, mixed with the smell of gunpowder, my heart ached, but then a few months later, I returned, raised my hand to my eyebrows, looked at thousands of white kapok flowers flying across the border sky and felt excited, when I saw the ethnic people taking the flowers to make blankets and mattresses, I always remembered the old days when my friends and I collected each kapok flower, plucked more reed flowers to make pillows, for a good night's sleep, nurturing the dream of traveling here and there to satisfy the man's desire.

The day I arrived at Broai village of Dak Lak province, where there were thousands of po-lang flowers, I heard the village elder tell the story of the flower's origin, and I remembered the rare, solitary cotton tree in my neighborhood; I saw the children here singing "I am a po-lang flower", tying the flowers into many crowns, and I always remembered the old days when I lay with my head on the grass all morning waiting for each cotton flower to fall, competing to collect them until I could form a bunch; I remembered the joking song of the older brothers and sisters: "You are like the cotton flower on the tree/ My body is like the clover grass by the roadside/ I pray for the wind and dew/ The cotton flower falls down, and the clover grass runs through it".

Kapok flowers, cotton trees, and po-lang trees have all entered poetry. “Someone planted cotton trees at the border/ or at the border, the tree found its way to grow/ the blood-red flowers lasted a thousand years/ the tree stood tall and green as a border marker.”

The tree has become a symbol for the border guards. The abundance of po-lang has become a symbol of the Central Highlands, so when clearing the forest to make fields, the villagers insist on keeping the po-lang tree. The lonely tree standing in the sun and dew at the beginning of my hometown, every March, it lights up red like a torch in the blue sky, the rice has become a "navigator" to guide me, so that those who are far from home do not lose their way back... Flowers, no matter what their name, all have immutable values.

This spring, returning to my hometown, I was lost in the middle of an empty space, feeling lonely and empty inside, because the tree had “passed away”. When old, one must return to the eternal world. But the tree has become a “heritage tree” in me and ignited so many nostalgic memories of childhood…

Now next to the old kapok tree is the village cultural house, I suddenly had an idea and expressed it to my nephew who loves bonsai: Why don't you plant a bonsai kapok tree, bend it to form the shape of "five blessings" or "three blessings" and donate it to the cultural house. The rough image of the tree will contribute to reviving the kapok tree of Gio hamlet, so that today's young generation can easily imagine the old kapok tree and ease the regret of people like me.

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