The roads are paved with dry straw

I was born and raised in a rural area, where nameless village roads wind through vast rice fields. My childhood had no bustling cities, no high-pressure lights. Instead, there was a clear blue sky with large and small kites fluttering, the sound of roosters crowing and golden roads sparkling after each harvest, covered with dry straw like private paths covering each piece of full memory.

Illustration: NGOC DUY

Harvest season is always a busy season but also a season filled with laughter. Every time the rice ripens, the whole village bustles like a festival. Adults go to the fields early in the morning, quickly wielding sickles and picking. We children, although we cannot help much, still eagerly follow our mothers and grandmothers to the fields on misty mornings.

In those days, after harvesting, the rice was gathered, tied into bundles, the straw was turned upside down to dry, and then threshed with a hand-cranked machine. The threshed straw was dried right on the roadside. The entire long village road from the beginning of the village to the exit to the field turned into a soft, warm carpet of yellow sunlight.

The straw strands, still damp with the smell of night dew, were skillfully spread out by my mother, waiting for the sun to dry. When the sun was high in the sky, the straw was crispy, light and spongy, shining a golden color like honey. After drying three or four times under the golden sunlight, the straw was loaded onto a cart or ox cart and taken home to be gathered into piles and mounds.

The streets were a magical world to us kids. We ran and played on the straw mats as if we were lost in a fairy tale. One time, my friends and I gathered straw to build houses, building them into mounds like city kids playing with blocks.

Some of the more daring ones even used straw, wrapped it around an old banana tree trunk or a dry coconut leaf to make a horse to ride, and held bamboo sticks as swords, imagining themselves as ancient generals going to defeat the enemy. The laughter echoed throughout the small village, more bustling than the sound of threshing rice or the sound of engines in the afternoon fields.

The smell of dry straw is also a part of the fragrance associated with my hometown. It is the pungent smell of rice straw, mixed with the sun and wind of the fields. It is also the smell of the harvest, of my father's sweat pouring into the fields, of my mother's calluses roughened by the years. Every time I go far away, just by chance catching the smell of straw somewhere, my heart suddenly tightens, as if a dormant memory has just been awakened.

But now, those straw-paved roads are only a memory. My village has changed its appearance. The village roads have been paved with smooth, clean concrete. Combine harvesters have replaced human hands, and the threshed rice is taken straight home. There is no longer the scene of straw being collected and dried on the road, no more bright yellow carpets under the children's feet. Nowadays, not many children know how to play with straw, because they are used to phones, televisions, and games in the magical world of the internet.

I returned to my hometown, standing in front of the road leading to the village but could not see any trace of the past. The same road, the same path leading to the afternoon fields, but there was no longer the scene of people diligently harvesting rice, their faces covered in sweat but shining with indescribable joy because of the bumper crop of rice full of grain.

The whole vast sky was empty, only my shadow remained under the shadow of the electric pole and the newly erected iron fence. I longed to see the golden straw covering the path, to breathe deeply the smell of dry straw in the midday sun, to hear the clear laughter of my old self with bare feet running on the straw carpet under the scorching yellow sunlight.

Although I feel a bit regretful, looking back and seeing my hometown has changed a bit, especially in the moment of administrative merger of provinces and cities towards the era of national development, my heart is filled with pride. I silently tell myself that it is not the path that has been lost, but only time that has been temporarily hidden somewhere.

Because there was a time when village roads were not only paths, but also places to nurture the immature dreams of children in the hopes of the country people with muddy hands and feet.

Temporarily closing the village roads paved with dry yellow straw in my memory, my heart opens with the wish for my hometown to develop and prosper more and more. So that the dry straw roads in my memory, even if they are gone, will still be intact, golden, fragrant and warm like a sun that never sets in the nostalgia of many generations born and raised in beautiful, peaceful villages.

Song Ninh

Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/nhung-con-duong-trai-vang-rom-kho-195634.htm