Driving slowly along the road that stretched across the vast fields, I caught a whiff of smoke from burning rice stalks in the wind, evoking familiar, old-fashioned memories. Suddenly, a deep longing for home stirred within me, a yearning for the days when I would follow my father every afternoon to burn rice straw in the fields.
In my hometown, we grow rice twice a year, the winter-spring crop followed by the summer-autumn crop. The winter-spring crop is usually harvested around the end of April or the beginning of May. When the rice in the fields is gone, everyone's yard is full of baskets of golden rice. The short period between the two rice crops is the "field rest" days, when buffaloes and cows are allowed to roam freely in the fields. For us children, these days are even more joyful than Tet (Vietnamese New Year), because the final exams of our school year have just finished, marking the beginning of a long three-month summer vacation. On the vast countryside fields, the rice paddies are now just bare stubble, the soil dry and hard. On breezy afternoons in the countryside, we can run, jump, fly kites, play cricket fights, and frolic in the piles of rice straw all afternoon without getting bored.
In my hometown, after harvesting, the rice is threshed right there, and the straw is spread evenly on the field to dry. About a week later, people start burning the straw. My father said this is to eliminate pests from the previous crop, drive away rats, and the ash from the burnt straw becomes organic fertilizer to enrich the fields for the summer-autumn planting season. On May afternoons, as the sun slowly sets behind the mountains, leaving only streaks of yellow in the sky, as if regretting a long day of diligently lighting fires, the strong evening wind rustles through the bamboo groves. My father picks up his three-pronged rake and heads towards the field. After inspecting the field, he uses the rake to spread the straw evenly across the field and then lights it. The smoke rises in gentle wisps like clouds, blending with the vast blue sky and the strong southerly wind that spreads across the countryside, bringing with it a warm, familiar scent—the scent of my beloved homeland. It was the pungent smell of the earth in my hometown, the earthy scent of freshly dried straw, the crackling of leftover, slightly shriveled rice grains, imbued with a sweet, nutty aroma. My childhood was filled with afternoons spent following my father as he burned straw in the fields, our faces smudged from running back and forth helping him light the fire, playing with the ashes. Sitting on the edge of the field, we watched the white smoke rise, carrying with it our absent-minded thoughts and childish dreams. We used to ask each other where those plumes of smoke would go – to the city, to the open sea, or over the mountains on the other side? And we secretly wished we could be like that smoke, drifting far and wide, reaching lands far beyond our village fields.
The children from that village are now scattered in different directions, each pursuing their childhood dreams. Like me today, thousands of miles from home, the faint scent of smoke rising from a distant field fills my heart with nostalgia for those days gone by.
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