Afternoon. A cool breeze swept through the streets, carrying away the stifling heat of the dry, sunny days. Suddenly, my motorbike unintentionally turned onto an old street. It had been so long since I'd been back; the familiar feeling it once had was gone. The old street appeared before me, both strange and familiar...
A street corner in the capital city.
Here it is, the old sấu tree in front of the apartment complex gate. I remember years ago, when the sấu trees bloomed, you could smell the refreshing, gentle fragrance of the flowers as soon as you got home. After each night, the sấu flowers would fall, covering the ground in white. My best friend wrote a poem about the sấu flowers with the line, "A thousand stars fall from the night." Every sấu season, the children of the entire complex eagerly awaited the fruit. Not to eat it, but to harvest and sell it for money for the end-of-summer party. They were only allowed to pick slightly bruised or unripe fruits that had fallen, and dip them in salt. Truly, children in times of scarcity, even though the sấu was incredibly sour, would chew on it with relish. Looking up at the sấu tree's canopy, I imagine a man with a stick hooking bunches of sấu, the children standing under the tree eagerly looking up. Then, whenever a sấu fell, the whole group would rush out, scrambling to pick them, sometimes even arguing. And at the end of the day, each child would sit and count to see who had picked the most.
The old tamarind tree has witnessed countless scenes of communal life during the subsidy era. The three-story apartment buildings were each only 18 square meters. All other activities like cooking, bathing, and sanitation were communal and required going down to the ground floor. The children in the communal housing would gather at the appointed time to wash rice and vegetables... During Tet (Lunar New Year), they would wash leaves and sort beans to prepare for making banh chung (traditional Vietnamese rice cakes). Even in the biting cold, their cheeks would be rosy from working and chatting excitedly like popcorn popping. The best part was boiling the banh chung under the tamarind tree. The children would compete with the adults to stay up for the first half of the night to gather and play cards, and also roast corn, sweet potatoes, and cassava. The whole neighborhood boiled their banh chung together. Back then, the elderly men were all soldiers, so they had large military-grade barrels. Each barrel held about thirty or forty cakes. Each household's cakes were individually marked to avoid confusion. The act of marking things with green, red, purple, and yellow, using ropes and cloth, was usually the prerogative of children, especially girls.
I chuckled, remembering the "group hair washing" game. Every two or three days, the long-haired girls would gather fallen sấu leaves, wash them clean, boil them, and then carry them out to the courtyard. Each girl had a pot, a basin, and a wooden chair. We'd wash our hair and chat, having as much fun as Tet (Vietnamese New Year). Back then, we only used sấu leaves (at most, half a lemon), and our hair was always lush and green. I wonder if it's because I used sấu leaves so much that my hair is both thick and black?! Not far from the apartment complex were rows of milkwood trees that would bloom in October as scheduled. Back then, under these milkwood trees, I first uttered the words "I love you"; my heart trembled like a swaying leaf for the first time; I first knew what it meant to pick someone up and drop them off... Instead of riding a bicycle, I'd push the bike with one hand and hold the other's hand with the other, stretching the path home to the gate... The old street is still here, but where is that person from back then?
Memories, buried in the dust of time and seemingly faded, now only need a gentle breeze to blow away all traces of time. It seems as if just a single leaf's touch will cause the box of memories to burst open, and countless recollections will spill out... The old street remains, the memories remain. Oh, little street, I will return here!
(According to nguoihanoi.vn)
Source: https://baophutho.vn/pho-cu-226457.htm
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