The wisps of smoke were caught in the rain.

08:59, 22/10/2023

I returned home on a drizzly day. That morning, while still enjoying a late sleep, I was awakened by the smell of smoke. Even without seeing, I could picture the smoke rising from the old kitchen where my mother was busily preparing breakfast for the whole family.

I stepped out onto the porch of the main house and gazed down at the old kitchen, where wisps of white smoke drifted up in the rain. The smoke, caught in the rain, made me smile as I remembered saying something similar to my family when I was a child.

Outside, the rain continued to fall gently, each drop a soft drizzle. Perhaps this was the last rain of autumn. Autumn rain always gives people a feeling of melting away in every moment; everything seems to blend together peacefully and slowly, lingering reluctantly. The rain wasn't torrential or heavy, which allowed smoke to rise in the rain. I remember when my kitchen was thatched with straw, the straw would stick together and get soaking wet. Even though my father had sealed the kitchen tightly, somehow the smoke could still seep through the straw and get up. Then, when the kitchen was tiled with red brick-colored industrial tiles, the smoke still seeped through the gaps.

The smoke was a milky white, and from a distance, it looked like mounds of clouds. The entire countryside, with glimpses of tiled roofs and lush green trees, seemed to float like a dream. When I was little, I asked my mother where the smoke, caught in the rain, would go. She gently stroked my head and smiled, saying it would fly until it got tired. In the mind of a ten-year-old like me, smoke was like a living creature capable of love, anger, and even… legs, as my mother said. I found the smoke incredibly endearing.

Illustration: Tra My

Smoke, caught in the rain, rose from the kitchen. It was the place where my childhood memories lingered – sometimes sitting beside my mother, other times alone – as I cooked rice, soup, boiled water, or pig feed. Before gas or electric stoves, wood-burning stoves were the primary source. The wood could be dried guava, longan, or jackfruit tree stumps, or corn stalks and straw. Next to the stove where the pot rested, my father built two separate, neat square compartments with bricks. One compartment was for firewood, the other for rice husks. Depending on what we were cooking, we would add firewood or rice husks to keep the fire burning. Whenever I cooked pig feed, I would put in large logs first, wait for the fire to ignite, then pile rice husks around it. The husks caught fire very quickly but also produced quite a lot of smoke.

The smell of rice husk smoke is one of the many smells that fascinates and makes me think deeply. In the smell of rice husk smoke, I detect a hint of the aroma of freshly milled rice. There's the slightly burnt smell of the chapped grains, and perhaps even the smell of the sweat and toil of my parents who painstakingly produced that fragrant, sticky rice.

I grew up amidst countless seasons of smoke mixed with rain. Sometimes I ask myself: are those wisps of smoke mixed with rain, or am I the one entangled in nostalgia? Because sometimes I feel strange; returning to my hometown during the rainy season and encountering the smoke, I become absent-minded, lost in thought, standing alone in silence, gently inhaling the scent of the smoke in the rain, filling my lungs. I yearn, longing for the freedom of the smoke drifting across the vast sky of my homeland…

Ngoc Linh

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