The monsoon season in my hometown.

In my hometown, where there are six months of freshwater and six months of saltwater, the saltwater season begins around the 15th day of the 11th lunar month and lasts until May of the following year. The remaining half of the year is the freshwater season. During the freshwater season, people plant rice. On the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, they sow the seedlings and wait to transplant them. When the rice plants sprout, the fields are full of tilapia. When the rice plants stand tall, waiting for the northeast monsoon to produce panicles, the tilapia feed on the fallen pollen, becoming plump and fatty.

Another gift from nature to my hometown, the Sesbania grandiflora tree also waits for the harvest to bloom, its clusters of pure white flowers swaying interspersed with playful, mischievous buds, like the innocent children we were back then. In the early morning, the flower clusters that were buds the previous afternoon now burst open, fresh and delicious, still glistening with dew, gently and shyly revealing their pure yellow stamens. My sisters and I loved the sweet-smelling nectar in the flower's calyx. My father wouldn't let us climb the tree, so he made a long pole with a hook to pick the Sesbania grandiflora flowers. Uncle Bay Long and Uncle Ut Tho would climb the tree, choosing the freshest clusters and throwing them down. Little Ngoc Nhi would hold out her conical hat to catch them, while I loved picking Sesbania grandiflora flowers with the pole. I liked looking up to admire the azure sky with its gently drifting white clouds and the beautiful Sesbania grandiflora tree, from its leaves to its flowers, swaying... swaying...

Uncle Long, who was twelve years older than me, was always up to something my sisters and I loved. He would take us and Uncle Tho to find yellow ant nests to collect their eggs as bait for catching perch. He used a long bamboo pole to poke at the ant nest, and a conical straw hat tied to a string and hung upside down on the pole to catch the ant eggs. Uncle Long would hold the pole with the hat attached and poke it into the nest from below, shaking it gently. The ant eggs would fall into the hat hanging below, and the yellow ants would fall down with them. Sometimes we would get bitten painfully, but we still enjoyed picking the ant eggs. When the hat was lowered, Ngoc Nhi and I had to quickly shake off the larger ants, otherwise they would carry all the eggs away. Uncle Long would bring the catch back, roast it with rice bran to make it fragrant, and then stuff it with leftover rice to form balls for fishing. Ant egg bait was very effective, and perch loved it.

When the sun was about a meter high, Uncle Bay Long would take all of us kids fishing. I had to beg my mother a lot to let me go, as the fishing season had arrived with the northeast wind. In the fields, the water receded, and the fish followed the current back to the canals to prepare to enter the ponds. At the canal ends and on the dam, the fish snapped their claws like boiling rice, the water rippling in continuous circles. People in the countryside catch fish in many ways: setting nets, setting hooks, and digging traps. These traps are dug to catch the fish as they retreat from the fields to the ponds. Sometimes, the water recedes too quickly for the fish to get back into the canals, and they lie there gasping for breath in the middle of the field. That's what people call catching fish in shallow water.

Because my father wouldn't let us wade in the mud to catch fish in shallow water, fearing we'd accidentally step on thorns or get cut by fish spines, Uncle Bay Long took us fishing with a rod and line. Fishing was cleaner and more leisurely than catching fish in shallow water. Two fishing rods, a small handful of roasted yellow ant eggs. After baiting, we'd hook the bean-shaped egg bait onto a rice stalk and wait for the float to move – the kind made from the stem of a garlic bulb. Uncle Bay Long and Uncle Ut Tho would fish, and my three sisters and I would carry a tin bucket to hold the fish. Our eyes would widen as we watched the line being lowered, the fish biting the float and jerking the rod. Each time we pulled up a golden-yellow perch, we'd cheer in victory. Uncle Bay Long would remove the fish from the hook; each time the bait dissolved in the water, attracting more fish, and we'd bite continuously. Besides perch, we'd also catch some snakehead and a few other fish. I eagerly begged Uncle Ut Tho to let me hold the fishing rod for a while. I caught a few perch and was thrilled, but I had to let little Ngoc Nhi fish with me. Ngoc Nhien was too young to fish, and her face looked so sad she looked like she was about to cry... I felt sorry for her.

With my mother's culinary skills, a lavish meal during the monsoon season was served, steaming hot. Braised perch, spicy chili peppers, a bowl of sour soup with sesbania flowers... Sometimes, she would make crispy fried perch, a sweet and sour fish sauce with garlic and chili, and boiled sesbania flowers, all incredibly delicious. Those flavors blended together and are deeply etched in my memory.

Besides the delicious food of the monsoon season, I also long for the coolness of the countryside, the pure white egrets soaring, the starlings perched on the dike... and the wind, the monsoon wind that blows through the trees of my homeland.

LE THI NGOC NU

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