The end of the year windy season… - Quang Binh Electronic Newspaper

(QBĐT) - In the city at the end of the year, the wind blows fiercely, making the colder and colder, and the hearts of people far from home like me feel more restless.

Every year, the end-of-year wind comes back, still the same bitter cold, but I feel different every year. And when the new wind season comes, I feel nostalgic for the old wind season. The feeling at that time is hard to name, both gentle and passionate. Like remembering a lover's promise, remembering a fragrant kiss, a flirtatious look, so that the night brings endless love and longing.

The end of the year wind season, why does it seem like time passes so quickly, even though a day still takes the same amount of time. I remember the time when I was still in the countryside, every time the end of the year wind came, my mother was always in a hurry. Remembering my mother is remembering a small, skinny figure with short legs, getting up early to run to race against time. When my mother listed a few things, I saw a mountain of work, jobs with and without names.

Illustration photo. Source Internet

I remember the early morning smoke rising from the kitchen, the smell of boiled sweet potatoes, boiled cassava, the bowl of fried cold rice with fragrant pork fat that my mother had lit while I was still in a deep sleep. I remember the times standing on the porch, my mother grumbling that she refused to wear more warm clothes, more scarves because the wind at the end of the year is usually… poisonous wind. The nagging of mothers in the countryside is always the same, it sounds like scolding but is filled with endless love.

I remember the times I went to school with my friends on the village road, the heavy wheels when pedaling against the wind. Pressing the pedals and smiling, dreaming of an upcoming Tet. One liked to go to the Tet market to play folk games like “Bầu, cua, tôm cá”, shooting darts at balloons… Another craved a bowl of hot bánh duc in the cold winter, exhaling smoke. I dreamed of new clothes and sandals. But my parents couldn’t afford them every Tet.

During the last windy season of the year, I remember the nights lying next to my mother, listening to her sighs, hiding her thoughts. Children are carefree and innocent, but for adults, Tet is sometimes a “burden”, an invisible fear. Mother worries that her children will not have new clothes to wear during Tet, worries that the house does not have enough meat, candy, or jam. Worry about whether the chickens will be sold for a good price during Tet? Then there will be vegetables, firewood…

In the end of the year windy season, thinking about my hometown, I always feel indebted to many favors. From the village road when it was still red dirt until it was poured with clean concrete, it was the place that supported my steps from my first steps until I grew up and went far away. To the rows of eucalyptus trees that are many years old and no one remembers the name, the leaves rustling and falling, the children often pile them up to burn to keep warm. And the familiar corner of the countryside market with so many smells: the plastic smell of rabbit-shaped balloons that every child loved when they were young; the smell of some bags of ginger jam, pumpkin jam, ginger jam that someone had cooked early to sell; the smell of the river water rising up with a lingering smell of moss; the smell of the simple country people lingering in the brown shirt...

These days, at the end of the year, the wind returns. The rustling winds seem to blow into my homesickness even more intensely. Each gust of wind is an indescribable feeling of longing. Oh, it seems like hot drops of water are touching my cheeks. Only then do I realize that tears have fallen. It’s not because I’m sad, but I feel so lucky to have experienced so many end-of-year wind seasons with so many sweet memories…

Tang Hoang Phi

Source: https://www.baoquangbinh.vn/van-hoa/202412/mua-gio-cuoi-nam-2222988/