A young person texted me: "I miss the smell of my hometown here so much!"
Yes. We all have a homeland to love and remember. Family, relatives, friends, love... all fly from home in many directions. And in the memories of children who live far away, the homeland also has its own unique scents, familiar and precious in the heart.
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It is the fragrant scent of laurel flowers in the corner of the yard. It is the areca leaf falling down to reveal a cluster of fragrant yellow apricot flowers. It is the summer afternoons when the village road is tilted with clusters of drooping betel flowers, the sweet scent making people's footsteps more thoughtful.
It is the smell of cows with their tails dangling on the country road leading up the slope of the mountainous district... The thin mother follows behind with a whip to make them follow in line. It is the smell of old tin roofs hidden behind the trees and small roads, a gust of wind blowing through and red dust flies up. The dust of the land of this land sticks very tightly to the leaves and grass...
The road passes through the land that was acacia forest a few months ago, now it is purple sweet potato. The rainy season has not yet arrived, so the green color has not yet arrived, but it is still lush and green. Round and round. The road is a vast, simple green color. The faint scent of sweet potato leaves that the cows passing by have swept into their mouths. The scent reminds me of the days of herding buffaloes in the past. The sweet potato fields have all been harvested, occasionally there are clusters of plump, red sweet potato sprouts sticking out of the ground. That is where the remaining pieces of sweet potato are. Use a piece of wood to dig it up, wash it with water, dig a small hole at the foot of the hill of the vast field, dry it with a brown shirt, and then chew the sweet potato raw. The starch has turned into sugar, so it is sweet and cool to eat. Yet no one has any stomachaches. The pungent scent of sweet potato leaves mixed with the scent of grass and trees fills the air, I suddenly think that it is a scent called simple. Like the scent of the unvarnished beauty and silk of a lover of the homeland. She had eyes gazing into the distance at the purple horizon of the irrigation lake; there was the lush canopy of an ancient tree that, at the hottest of summer afternoons, the sunlight could not penetrate. There was a faint smell of damp, rotting leaves and a fragrant flower in the air. There was also the smell of grass being crushed when the herd of cows passed by. There was also the scent of ripe jackfruit and of the golden rice fields along the stream rustling in the wind.
Those scents of flowers and fruits surround us, from the garden to the alley, following the children on their way to school, the adults to the fields or to the offices. Even at the gates of those offices, there is still the sweet fragrance of the trellis of zinnias or old roses growing in the corner of the yard. Then there is the fragrance of cups of coffee brewed with a filter. In the shimmering golden sunlight, we inhale more deeply the scent of the land to become more alert, starting the working day with positivity and enthusiasm. In the corner of the garden of the house next door, there is a peach tree - after Tet that year. It doesn't sound too sure because we know that this country has more sunshine while peach trees are a type of tree that becomes more colorful in the cold. It originated from a peach tree in the corner of the garden in the Northeast, where there are cold winters. One day, the geological engineer transferred to work in that area, just in time for it to bloom. The flower of a tree that is not very luxuriant, so it only half-opens and half-closes its fragile, pale pink petals. Amidst a garden of proud red roses and purple orchids, its delicate pink color trembles in the wind like a lovely bewilderment. The years pass quickly. That Northern peach tree is used to the 4-month dry season as well as the heavy rains of the mountainous rainy season. It calmly blooms among the proud, brilliant yellow apricot blossoms. It just goes like that, calmly passing through the seasons and weather conditions in the new land, patiently saving a little bit of the soil's resources to survive in the garden.
Yet why this morning when the sunlight passed through the wide and gentle yard and reached the garden where it was, the wind suddenly seemed a little hesitant and then became gentle. Was it because the pink color of the petals had faded and the leaf axils from yesterday were now darker green? And every time the wind blew, its fragile petals trembled slightly. A very light fragrance wafted through as the honeybees buried their heads in the flower's bud to passionately suck nectar. Looking at that scene, I remembered the red peach blossoms of my motherland, the red peach blossoms of Lang Son and the red peach blossoms of Nhat Tan like the cheeks of a young girl when facing the passionate gaze of her lover.
No matter how far away I go, my heart always holds the image of my homeland with its unforgettable scents...
BICH THIEM
Source: https://baokhanhhoa.vn/van-hoa/sang-tac/202409/huong-xu-so-50f3046/
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