Saigon is experiencing a cool, crisp weather in the last days of the year. It's been a long time since the city has had such a distinct winter with such pleasant weather. This is understandable due to the influence of low-pressure systems and storms. The changing weather also means that the elderly and children are inevitably affected by the sudden shifts in temperature.
As the year draws to a close, everyone is busy preparing to welcome the new year, and within me—a person far from home—a sudden longing for December arises. December arrives, signaling the end of the old year and the beginning of January for the new. December recedes into the past, giving way to another cycle of three hundred and sixty-five days, after which we begin another journey that seems long, yet is very short: life!
This December, the weather was unusual, with rain showers every morning and afternoon, leaving many people bewildered. And at the end of the year, floods wreaked havoc in the North and Central regions, causing immense suffering. Every year, people in the North and Central regions thought they would finally find peace in the final days of the year, hoping for a better new year, but storms continued to batter them, especially in the South, which experienced a storm unlike anything seen in a long time.
As the year draws to a close and Tet (Lunar New Year) approaches, train stations and ports become bustling with people coming and going, everyone searching for a ticket to return home for the holiday. For those who work far from home, returning once a year, or even every few years, is a familiar sight. Their hometown might be a simple house, a small, sun-drenched yard, a dried-up river, a barren plot of land, or a desolate street during stormy, rainy days. But they must return to experience the scent of their homeland, a scent that only those from the countryside can truly feel and smell.
After celebrating the Western New Year followed by the Lunar New Year, this time of year often evokes a sense of nostalgia in those who, due to circumstances, have been away from their hometown for many years and no longer have a place to return to their birthplace.
My hometown is a place where coconut trees sway in the biting northerly winds of the sea at the end of the year, where fishermen gaze at the sky and sea, "predicting the weather for the next 24 hours" before setting sail, a floating fishing village drifting with the ebb and flow of the tides. My hometown, like Saigon, has only two seasons: rainy and sunny, a land generously blessed by nature with abundant sunshine, wind, and sea sand. The people are gentle as sand, honest as can be; if they are too poor, they complain to the heavens; if they are angry, they only know how to stomp their feet and lament while looking at the sky…
I idly ponder the end of the year, then feel sad about the end of life. Life, if you consider it carefully, has many endings: the end of the year, the end of the road, the end of the river, the end of life… And if one had to choose one of these endings, people would always avoid… the end of life. But even if they avoid it, one day, whether near or far, it will come. If only the end of life would lead to a new life, like the end of the year leading to a new year, how wonderful that would be! Humans are inherently “attached to life and fearful of death,” but creation is fair; if humans were immortal, who knows, it might be a disaster for humanity?
As the year draws to a close, the trees lining the streets begin to shed their leaves. The sky seems even bluer, the clouds even whiter, only the yellow leaves fail to turn any yellower. Saigon is a crowded city, and all around, people are wandering, shopping, packing their bags to bring back a few gifts to offer to their ancestors in their hometowns. At the end of the year, people summarize their achievements, gains and losses, and few summarize their age, because adding another year means taking another step in life. Knowing this, people still happily welcome the new year. As for me, at the end of the year, I don't know whether to be happy or sad to receive another year of my life.
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