The sea in my hometown is so beautiful this season. Another nephew messaged me, saying Saigon is scorching hot in the morning and then has thunderstorms in the afternoon. The rainy season in the South has arrived. My aunt sent a message on Zalo saying Hanoi has suddenly turned cold lately, making the streets breathtakingly beautiful. When will you come back to the North to visit everyone? My older brother in Canada confided that Guelph is just beginning to experience spring, with flowers blooming everywhere. His eldest daughter has a law degree and is preparing to move to Toronto for work. Where I live in the eastern United States, the weather this year has been very unpredictable. It's suddenly turned cold lately, even though the cicadas, after a decade of dormancy, have finally risen and are calling out the faint sounds of summer.
We are like migratory birds, flying everywhere across Vietnam and the globe. If my mother were still alive, seeing her children and grandchildren scattered everywhere, she would surely be very sad. My mother is the classic type of country woman, loving her grandchildren more than anything in the world. To her, even though our hair is streaked with gray, we are still young children just learning to live, not yet fully understanding life. My mother often compares herself to a hen, always wanting to keep her children and grandchildren close, not wanting to leave, so that we can see each other every day and find joy in life. She had over a dozen children, but she absolutely refused to let any of us go to work far away. She was resourceful, devising all sorts of jobs so that we could all work together to earn a living and live a simple life in the countryside, instead of struggling in a foreign land. And especially, never ever talk about asking to adopt one of my mother's children. When I was little, there was an aunt who liked and loved me very much, and kept trying to persuade my mother to let me be her adopted child. She smiled and said, "If you like it, take it home to play with for a few days, then return it to me. How could I bear to give away my own flesh and blood?"
Although we love the sun-drenched, windswept land of Ninh Hoa so much that our hearts ache, sometimes we have to leave our hometown to pursue our education, careers, and seek job opportunities amidst a life full of hardships and temptations. Then, on sad afternoons, missing her children and grandchildren, Mother often sits on the chair in front of the house, watching the sunset, and reproaching us for not visiting one of them, or another who has disappeared without a trace or letter, leaving this old woman sitting here waiting and longing.
When we first came to America, we didn't know when we'd be able to visit home. We missed home so much that we had to buy prepaid phone cards because we didn't dare use landline phones, fearing that if we got too excited and said too much, the bill at the end of the month would be astronomical. We often chatted via Yahoo! Messenger over the phone line, the webcam stuttering and frustrating. Now, the distance and time have been shortened considerably by video calling apps with sharp, clear images. We call each other dozens of times a day, talking about everything under the sun. Sometimes we don't say a word, just leave the video call on. Hearing the dogs barking and chickens clucking, we feel so close, even though we're thousands of kilometers apart. Besides, we earn a lot of money now. Each year, we manage to visit home a few times to see our close relatives.
The good thing is that whether we're in Vietnam or far away in Australia or America, we always try to stay together, to be by each other's side, to support each other. So whenever we have free time, we sit down for dinner, telling each other memories of our parents, the carefree years of our childhood, when a dozen or so people crowded together, sharing bowls of rice mixed with cassava and sweet potatoes, a few duck eggs marinated in fish sauce, or salty squid with the fragrant smell of the sea. No one ever punished us, yet everyone would suddenly burst into tears.
Source: https://thanhnien.vn/nhan-dam-nhung-doi-canh-thien-di-185250614185345497.htm
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