Go through the summer

• Summer fun - Learning and playing
• Meaningful summer
• A safe and enjoyable summer

My hometown is a river area with two seasons, rainy and dry, so the river water is salty and sweet depending on the season. People here also depend on the water to make a living, in the rainy season they grow rice - raise crayfish, freshwater fish, in the dry season they raise tiger prawns - sea crabs... From there, fish and shrimp also follow the water into canals, ditches, fields, creating a source of livelihood for the people and also a special gift that the river area gives to us children when summer comes.

Catch fish by bailing out the canal.

Every early summer, without saying anything, my brothers and uncle Tu's children were waiting for me to come home. As soon as we got home and greeted my grandparents, Bo, Ty and Linh took me to the field to fish. Bo had prepared some old reeds, a few meters of nylon rope and a hook cover, and the fishing rods were quickly made. The bait was some seaweed shrimp that we had dug up from the canal under the sun.

While waiting for the fish to bite, the guys also soaked in the canal to catch crayfish. The crayfish waved their big green claws threateningly, their tails flicking but they could never escape us. The whole group was happy, shouting loudly throughout the countryside.

After a day of working in the sun and then through the rain in the fields, my brothers and I also found a bunch of snakehead fish and crayfish . We brought the big fish into the house for grandma to cook for dinner, and the medium snakehead fish and crayfish we went to the backyard to find straw to grill. Each of us had a job, some cut trees to skewer the fish, some carried straw, some went to find fire to burn...

Hold the straw and prepare to grill the crayfish.

Shrimps cook faster than fish, so we divided them into groups to grill. The straw burned through once, the shrimps were cooked bright red, using a reed to pick them out of the hot straw, and put them on a banana leaf. The sweetness of the shrimp meat, the fat of the roe, plus a bowl of spicy chili salt, mixed with an extremely attractive aroma.

While waiting for the fish to cook, my brothers and I played hide and seek on the haystack, the sound of arguing and laughing resounded throughout the countryside.

Several fat snakehead fish, Mr. Bo took a bamboo branch the size of a thumb, skewered it from the mouth to the tail, stuck it in the ground and covered it with a layer of straw. The fire caught the straw and burned brightly. While waiting for the fish to cook, we played hide and seek in the pile of straw. Mr. Ty was in charge of watching the fire, occasionally covering it with more straw. The straw burned out, revealing the fish standing upside down, their bodies black and fragrant.

After the fish was really cooked, Mr. Ty took some straw and gently scraped the fish to remove the burnt part, put the fish on a banana leaf, split the fish along its spine, from head to tail to reveal the white, fragrant fish meat, the whole group stopped playing, crowded together to reach in and pick it up, breaking it. The fish meat was so sweet, dipped in a bowl of spicy salt and chili, everyone kept sniffing, the loud laughter still lingered in the childhood memories of the children of the river region, their bodies were soaked but their smiles still warmed like straw on fire.

Fragrant, sweet grilled snakehead fish with straw.

August passed, September came, the cicadas stopped chirping in the canopy, the old royal poinciana tree in the front yard was full of new leaves, summer just passed but the beautiful memories still remained, so that every time I thought about it, I still felt nostalgic and regretful. The children also put aside the days of wading in the sun and rain with their friends in the fields, their clear eyes still filled with regret./.

Bao Han

Source: https://baocamau.vn/di-qua-mua-he-a34206.html