In the eyes of many people, he was truly happy. Even for his three meals, the maid brought them up to his room; even the underwear he changed out of when bathing, she fought to wash. The first time he heard the blaring music of the garbage truck stopping at the gate, he hurried down to the ground floor and carried the trash basket out to the truck. The next time, leaving the pan of oil sizzling on the stove, the maid ran over to take the trash basket from his hand, exclaiming as if she had done something wrong: "If you do that, your boss will scold you to death." His son stopped his father from carrying water to water the potted plants in the yard: "Dad, rest well, you're carrying it so slowly, if you don't, you'll fall and it'll be miserable." Unable to stop him, the son hid the watering can. The maid competed with him by watering the plants twice a day.

The day his son took him to buy a tent to visit a relative, he knew that there were still people in town who loved Chinese characters. Shyness did not stop him from giving the seller advice on the wrong characters. The seller was only "convinced" when he cited which sentence or story of the ancients the character came from. Like Ba Nha meeting Tu Ky, the tent seller came to his house, talked for a while and then asked him to cooperate. The customer said that of course he would count the effort, but the main thing was to review calligraphy and characters together. The owner smiled and shook his hand as a promise to the customer.

“That job, working hard all day, is very tiring! Besides, the traffic on the street is chaotic, it’s not good, Dad!” His son’s words dampened his joy. At first, he decided to do it his way, but he was not familiar with the roads, and he did not want to bother his children to pick him up and drop him off, so he gave up with regret.

His feet, accustomed to plowing the land and stubble, now wandered around the house; his only route in and out was from the bedroom to the gate. Sleeping little and watching TV all the time made his eyes tired, so he often lay on the bed, listening to the ticking of the wall clock.

After work, the son went to his father's room to visit him and confided: "If you need anything, just tell me." At the end of the conversation, the son repeated that familiar sentence. He reminded his father but before he could say anything, he brought home many things. This was a machine to put in his ears to hear clearly, that was a treadmill, a massage chair, a handheld massage machine. To keep him from going up and down the stairs, he bought a TV to put in his room, and installed a bell so that he could press his hand and his family would be there right away. He brought home a book on the date in Chinese characters for his father, telling him to watch it for fun. He smiled sadly: "What's the point of a good or bad day when the rain doesn't come to his face and the sun doesn't come to his head?" The daughter-in-law filled the refrigerator in the corner of the room with food and drinks, but he rarely used them. Every week, I changed the food and didn't forget to remind him to eat well.

When the old lady was still alive, that is, when the old man had not yet moved to the city to live with his children, the children came to visit every week. Seeing the father busy with village affairs, the children did not like it, and after much persuasion, they got angry and said frankly: "Dad is old, and has no salary, why bother holding on to it!?". The old man corrected himself cheerfully, "Why bother?" and then confided, the president was replaced constantly, let alone those useless positions in the village, but having something to do, and someone needing me, was also a joy.

The day he left his hometown, he was tormented: “What can I do in the city, my son? Am I just going to party all day and wait to die?”. That feeling seemed to multiply, making him sad all day long; he couldn’t help but share with his son: “Every day I just eat, sleep, take medicine and tear off each page of the calendar... How useless!”. His son smiled and encouraged him: “Everyone gets old, it’s time for me to rest, it’s time for us to take care of him.” He looked at his son with loving but sad eyes. It was also very sad when he stood on the balcony and looked back at his hometown in the late afternoon.

“I came back to burn incense for my ancestors. I plan to translate it into Vietnamese with my elders and supplement the family genealogy, because in the future, there will be fewer people who can read Chinese characters. If God allows me, I will sell all the bamboo in the garden and hire someone to dig up the roots and plant vegetables and perennial fruit trees. I don’t have many days left, but I want my children and grandchildren to…” Those were the lines my grandfather hastily wrote on the calendar on the table, pressing a ruler across it, before taking the bus back to his hometown.

Back home, he put on protective gear, boots, picked up a machete and a hoe and went out to the garden. The garden was overgrown with weeds after months of no one taking care of it. He was busy clearing, drying, burning, then returning to hoeing and tilling. It was autumn, the cool weather with night rains made the vegetable garden greener every day. He did not stop working from morning to night, sometimes just standing looking at the vegetables, his eyes lit up with joy. The chickens in the coop and the ducks in the pond were also plump to look at.

Street vendors often stopped by, admired the vegetable garden, and asked if they could sell it, but the old man smiled and shook his head: “Let me have some.” Every Saturday, he picked vegetables and fruits, putting each in a separate bag and then stuffing them into a large sack; chickens and ducks were locked in a cage; eggs were put in bags mixed with rice husks to keep them from breaking. His motorbike was hung with “supplies” from the countryside, as if he was going to do business, but his father still insisted on carrying more. Sometimes, watching the cart carrying vegetables and fruits back to the city, he was happy with a quiet smile.

His agile figure and nimble hands when holding a hoe showed that he was healthy, but his children were worried. The daughter who lived nearby told her son to go to his grandmother’s house to study and then sleep over every night. The son used a camera to follow his father from afar; every time he returned, he would repeat the refrain “Dad, rest well.” The son looked sad when he saw his father disheveled, covered in dirt and sand; he also compared that his father was not poor but looked more miserable than the poor households in the neighborhood. The son suggested the pleasures of old age, from playing chess and drinking tea to long trips or going to the city with his children and grandchildren… The father responded with indifference and disjointed words: “Each person has different joys and interests, why compare?”

After several times of advising his father not to “hurt himself”, the son refused to accept vegetables, chickens and ducks. The father was sad, his eyes looked down and his words were filled with tears. The son complied with his father’s words and set a condition: “This vegetable season is over, don’t grow anything else, father”. Looking at the garden full of weeds, someone asked him why he didn’t grow vegetables to sell. The response was a shake of the head in disappointment: “I do it because I want my children and grandchildren to have clean vegetables, but now they don’t need them anymore…” The old man’s words choked up.

The son came home and was happy to see his father leisurely leaning on the swing, absentmindedly looking out into the yard. He smiled and said, “See, are you happy like this?” The old man jumped up, looked straight at his son, and suddenly said loudly, “When no one needs you anymore, not even your own family, what is there to be happy about!?”

Father stormed away, the child looked after him bewildered.

Nguyen Trong Hoat