Auntie's house

(PLVN) - Chung was orphaned at a young age after his parents' arduous journey at sea. Since then, he has lived with his aunt, his mother's sister, and her children since he was ten years old. His aunt loved him in the same way he still remembers the love of his mother, and she never made him feel any boundaries in her affections through the way she treated him and her children.

It had been three years since her aunt passed away, and only now had she returned to her hometown, to visit the old house where she had lived throughout her childhood until she went to university. The winding country road, with its golden rice fields on one side and the mountains on the other, was now densely packed with houses due to urbanization. In the distance, the small, precarious temple still stood, a place she used to run up to with the neighborhood kids to help the monks sweep leaves and to light incense with her grandmother on the full moon nights. The road to her aunt's house was a winding, steep slope that required a skilled driver to navigate; imagine a car accelerating and then immediately accelerating without slowing down, or it would lose momentum. But the final destination was a spacious courtyard, where she and her aunt would spread out a mat in the middle of the yard and gaze at the stars during the full moon season.

- Do you see that little star? That's your parents, always watching over you from above. So whenever you miss them, look at it and know that they're always watching your growth, and keep living your life to the fullest.

The first time it went to its aunt's house was when it was walking home from a family gathering at its maternal grandparents' house. The country road was deserted back then, and its aunt's family was poor, so they could only walk to work or to visit their maternal grandparents. While it was exhausted, its aunt just smiled, slightly bent down, and said to it:

- Jump onto Auntie's back and let her carry you.

She didn't want to bother her aunt, but the pain of loss, the sleepless nights, and the long walk had exhausted her. She even fell asleep as soon as she climbed onto the broad back of the ox cart. All she could hear was the familiar lullaby her mother used to sing when she had trouble sleeping, the sound of the wind rustling in her ears, and the croaking of frogs in the fields along the deserted country road.

Her aunt's house was perched precariously on the top of a slope, and the daily climb up and down to school was enough to leave her breathless; once, she even lost her balance and fell headfirst on the way. Her aunt's spacious yard was where she often played with her cousins, who, like her aunt, treated her like a sibling and never discriminated against her. She remembered one time she got up to go to the bathroom at night and cried for a long time because of a gecko outside the door until her aunt found her. Even as a child, she was always afraid of geckos.

She only remembered her aunt picking her up, letting her little head rest on her shoulder, and whispering, "If you're ever afraid of anything, tell me. I'll always protect you." She always remembered those words and from then on, she opened up to her aunt more. When she went to high school, even though the school was further from home, she still walked to school. Because of this, her sandals wore out quickly, and her feet developed large blisters, but she tried to hide them. Many nights, when she guessed her aunt was asleep, she would sneak out to the front yard and sit there, wincing in pain, afraid that the house would be too quiet at night to make any noise. But that night, her aunt caught her. She applied ointment to her blisters, took her to the doctor the next day, and bought her a new pair of sandals. The next day, when she came home from school, she found her aunt waiting for her on the porch with an old bicycle she had bought from a neighbor...

Until she went to university, getting accepted into a school far away in the North, she kept the results a secret because she knew her aunt's family wasn't well-off, so she secretly put her second choice on her hometown university. She only remembers crying for a long time and holding her aunt's rough, weather-beaten hands as she made a promise. Later, her aunt sold the large yard in front of the house to pay for her education, making the house smaller, but she still joked, "Why live in a big house when you're all alone...?"

Her aunt passed away suddenly just as she received the acceptance letter to stay at the school after graduation. Returning home for her aunt's funeral, she realized how long the years she had been away had truly been, and how the landscape had changed in some way. The old slope now had convenient, carved steps. The rice paddies where she used to go snail hunting were sparsely populated, and one side of the road was now densely packed with houses. The large yard where she and her aunt used to discuss buying back their neighbor had been sold again, replaced by a stranger's house. She kept thinking that if she studied hard, she would visit her aunt tomorrow, but time had flown by so quickly that she didn't realize how many tomorrows she had already promised. And her aunt, who always waited for her after school just to smile and say, "You're home?", was no longer there to wait for her...

Huyen Tran

Source: https://baophapluat.vn/nha-di-ba-post545140.html