My Tet Moment: Wearing my mother's old ao dai to go out in the spring

Chụp hình với mẹ Tết 2024 — Take pictures with mom on Tet 2024

This year's Tet is special to me. The story is that before Tet, while cleaning the house, I accidentally found my mother's old ao dai lying quietly in a small drawer.

The white dress, printed with red, blue, and yellow geometric patterns, still looked brand new, just like in my memories of those Tet holidays, just like in the old photos my mother took that I often looked at in the family photo album. The dress evoked in me so many emotions of a difficult time.

That was the shirt my mother bought thirty years ago. At that time, my hometown was still a poor village, the village road was dirt, in the distance there were a few thatched houses standing alone in the middle of vast fields and rivers.

At that time, not many people owned their own ao dai. Women probably only wore ao dai on the most important day of their lives - their wedding day. And the same goes for my mother, the first ao dai she owned was made from a piece of fabric her grandmother gave her on the day of her engagement.

Mom said this as a custom, on the day of the blind date, among the gifts the groom's family brings to the bride's family, there must be a piece of fabric for the bride to make a new ao dai for the wedding day.

Mẹ mặc áo dài năm 94 tại tiệm chụp ảnh — Mom wearing Ao Dai in 1994 at the photo studio

In January 1974, in a pink ao dai, my mother became a new bride, following my father to Long Dien Dong. This land of salty water and sour fields year round only depends on a single harvest when it rains. If the rice crop is good and the price is high, they can survive until the next season. But if there are pests, diseases, or crop failures, my mother and father have to run around to find a little bit of food, clothing, and education for their children.

Then, it was not until Tet 1994, when her youth was over, when she was already the mother of three children, that she was able to wear the ao dai once again (at this time, thanks to an acquaintance's introduction, she went to cook for the kitchen of a shrimp factory in Gia Rai).

During those twenty years, many times when going to the Tet market, my mother would linger and look at the new fabrics hanging on the stalls and think. But then new clothes for her children, cakes and candies to buy for Tet... and a million other things quickly drove away the thought of a new ao dai every spring.

But the second ao dai in my mother's life was not a truly new one, not tailored to my mother's specifications, because it was bought from a pile of "second-hand clothes" dumped on the sidewalk in front of Ho Phong market for twenty-five thousand dong, also on the day near Tet when my mother went to the market to buy food to cook for the workers.

I asked my mother why she didn’t buy new clothes instead of old ones. She said she was… tired of money. Her monthly salary was more than 300,000 VND. If she bought fabric and paid for tailoring, one outfit would cost 70,000 VND or 80,000 VND. She saved that money to send back home to my sisters and me.

Mẹ nấu bếp tại xí nghiệp tôm — Mother cooks at the shrimp factory

At that time, my mother's workplace was nearly twenty kilometers away from my house. Compared to the convenient transportation conditions today, it sounds very close. But thirty years ago, the distance was far from home, the ferry was far away, the dirt road was dusty, and for a child of five or six years old like me, who had to be away from his mother, it was a very long distance.

At that time, every time I heard the sound of a ferry in the distance, I would run out to the road, waiting for the boat to dock, hoping that my mother would come upstairs. And even more hoping that every summer, my father would pack my clothes into a suitcase and take me to the factory to live with my mother until I could go to school.

Sometimes, father and son took the ferry early in the morning to Lang Tron market, from Lang Tron market they took a rickshaw down to Noc Nang to go to where mother worked. Sometimes, when it was sunny and the road was dry, father borrowed his second uncle's bicycle and clumsily carried me on the winding dirt road out there. The hot sun and dusty wind were behind me, in front of me was my father's sweaty back and the eagerness to see mother again after so many days apart.

The days of my childhood when I missed my mother have always followed me, so when I see the ao dai, it's like it comes back to life, filled with love and a tearful feeling.

Mặc áo dài của mẹ du xuân — Wearing mother's ao dai to go out in spring

I brought my mother’s ao dai with me to the province, wearing it to go to the spring market, through many streets and flower streets during this Tet holiday. Before now, I was always self-conscious about my appearance, but this time it was different. Among so many colorful ao dai, in so many beautiful and graceful young women’s figures, for the first time I felt I was the most beautiful, and the most special.

Because I know, I am not wearing a normal old ao dai, but being embraced by sacred memories, by memories of a difficult time with the boundless love of my parents.

The contest "My Tet Moment" has ended.

Taking place from January 25 to February 24, the My Tet Moments contest is an opportunity for readers to introduce the most beautiful moments and unforgettable experiences during Tet with relatives and friends.

The organizing committee has received nearly 600 articles from readers in the past month. More than 50 articles have been selected and are being published on Tuoi Tre Online . We sincerely thank readers for submitting entries and following the contest taking place during the Giap Thin Tet holiday this year.