Missing March so much - Quang Binh Electronic Newspaper

(QBĐT) - This year, after the Lunar New Year, there is a long period of sunshine that makes people forget the remaining cold of winter. The sky seems higher as the nostalgia for the old days fades over the years. March has something immense because the weather from spring to early summer is very strange. Just knowing to silently call a flower, a person's name is enough to feel warm and passionate.

Every time March comes, I think of my grandmother and the memories of her and her granddaughter making pickled bananas to get through the hunger every day. Back then, after the first month, almost every house in my neighborhood ran out of rice. The pickled bananas, cassava, and sweet potatoes mixed with rice had raised many generations to adulthood. Every time I think back, I want to cry seeing my grandmother lying in the yard with her heavy shoulder poles borrowing rice from other people when the lean season came.

The staggering steps in the rain, the shirt stained with sap when making banana pickles are engraved in my mind. Sometimes, I am startled, wanting to swim back in time to live in the hardships of that time. But realizing, my hands can only touch the sky of childhood and distant memories... Life flows forward, the past is behind, only the present is filled with tears when March comes.

That day, after Tet, my village was in a famine. My family had many siblings, so my grandmother divided the meal equally among us, and then she sat and watched us eat. She silently swallowed her tears, happy because the whole family ate like silkworms eating bamboo baskets. At that time, children only knew how to hold chopsticks and spoons, and did not need anyone to feed them, they just ate with their heads down. They ate happily and deliciously...

I remember, in front of the house, my grandmother was painstakingly slicing the banana stem into thin slices, putting them in a bucket to wash and then soak them in salt. I remember so much her hands, rough and dirty from the banana sap. Those stains of that day brightened my life. I remember the image of my grandmother bending over to pick up each thin, fragrant banana slice and wash it clean. Every time her hands squeezed the salt water, I thought of her heart sending into it the turbidity to make it clear and the warmth and vastness.

Illustration: Minh Quy — *Illustration:* **Minh Quy**

The jars of pickled bananas, like symbolic stars in my memory, occasionally flash in my mind, connecting the present and the past. Now that my grandmother is no longer here, life silently carries away the most precious things if we do not know how to preserve them. The old house has changed, the garden has been re-planned, but my grandmother’s voice and hands still linger in me amidst the hustle and bustle of life. The white color of each banana leaf, like the sorrow of a troubled life, keeps repeating itself in me.

Every time I go back to my grandparents’ house, looking out into the garden, I can still imagine the small, faint figure, meticulously cultivating each row of vegetables in the cold drizzle, with a worn, faded hat. I go into the old kitchen, take out the old bowl and stand there watching. Each bowl of rice mixed with cassava and the pickled banana dish appears clearly. It seems like my grandmother is looking in from the garden, smiling gently, the corners of her eyes showing crow’s feet, her voice deep and warm in the middle of a March noon.

I was stunned, quickly swallowing the memories, dreaming of finding a ticket to my childhood, even though I knew that the years were indifferent and did not wait for anyone. On the other side of the garden, the soft sounds of children babbling while studying. The stream of thoughts suddenly melted away, deepened, and I realized that I needed to slow down in the midst of the flowing life to let the hustle and bustle break down and see the joy that passes each day.

Like my grandmother, my mother washed vegetables, grass and bananas by the Kien Giang River every day. In the late afternoon sunlight illuminating the deep blue water, my mother’s eyes lit up with the red color of the Mưng flowers on the river branch that passed by our house. In the past and today, the Mưng tree is still imprinted in me like a red mark. Mưng brought my mother to my grandfather with the melody of the humane folk song and Mưng brought my father to my mother along this river.

When she was still alive, my grandmother told me: “The dish of pickled bananas with duck eggs is a product of the ancestors of the Le Thuy people, and the mưng flowers on this river are like embroidered brocade, try to keep them.” I looked up at the mưng tree at the end of the lane, seeing the green color whispering to the land as if telling an old story. Perhaps, it is time for my family to restore the banana trees behind the summer and make the existing mưng tree more beautiful. These two species of trees have a strange vitality and help people live with clarity and compassion.

It has been a long time since I have eaten pickled bananas, and my mother no longer goes down to the river to fetch water, wash vegetables, and slice bananas. But this March, when the chirping of birds hopping from branch to branch in the warm, sunny weather, I can smell the scent of memories glimmering. The smell of the crumbling earth, the musty smell of wet school clothes, and the warm, pungent aroma of bananas spreading on the tip of my tongue. My heart is filled with excitement and agitation. Oh March!

Ngo Mau Tinh

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