Tet comes and I miss my room

Just thinking about Tet, so many memories of the old house, of my mother, of the Tet dishes of the past come back like a scent fermented over the years, opening the lid of the jar of memories, spreading gently and permeating my soul. I gently closed my eyes, took a deep breath and felt in that warm yet distant scent a familiar and heartbreaking taste. That was the smell of my mother's Tet sausage.

Usually, around the 28th of Tet, after my sister and I carried the basket of pork that the cooperative had given us from the communal house yard home, my father would sit on the steps and divide the basket of meat into many parts. From the lean meat that was divided, my father would always reserve about half a kilo to put in a ceramic bowl and then call my mother over and say: "Here is the meat to make pork sausage, ma'am." So my mother would bring the meat bowl, the small cutting board hanging in the kitchen and the sharp knife, and sit in the yard. My sister and I started chattering and followed to watch my mother do it. My mother turned the ceramic bowl that my sister had just brought out, rubbed the knife blade on the bottom of the bowl, turned it from side to side a few times, then sliced the meat into several pieces, cutting the fresh lean meat into bright red slices. My mother's hands were agile, precise to the smallest detail. When finished, she marinated all the meat in the ceramic bowl with fish sauce and MSG.

Tet holiday, remember your father, picture 1

While my father put the marinated meat in the bowl into the mortar on the porch, my mother went to chop the cleaned green onions and left them on a small basket to drain. In just a moment, the green onions, which were mostly taken from the roots, were chopped into small pieces. The white and light green onion slices rustled like rain on the cutting board, splashing pungent drops of water into my eyes. Then the sound of my father's meat pounding pestle also stopped. My mother took the earthenware bowl containing the lean meat that had been pounded until it was soft and smooth, turning it into a thick, bright pink mass, and added the chopped green onions. My mother told me to get her the basket of washed, drained tofu that was on the porch. She put a dozen beans into the earthenware bowl, gently rotating it with a wooden pestle to break up the tofu, mixing it into a bowl of milky white mixture, dotted with the green of the thinly sliced green onions.

Finally, the fire was lit on the stove. The split, dry, sun-dried wood caught fire from the straw, warming the December kitchen. The fire crackled. A black cast iron pan, shiny with soot, was placed on the stove. My mother scooped a piece of solidified white fat from the earthenware pot and spread it on the surface of the pan, melting into a layer of watery fat.

My mother and sister sat shaping the meatballs. My mother was very skillful, none of them broke. Each meatball was as big as a butter cookie, still bearing the indentation of her finger. As she shaped it, my mother dropped it into the fat. The pan of fat sizzled, shooting tiny fat particles all around. My mother often told my sister and I to sit far away to avoid burns, but usually my sister and I did not move. My mother sat in the middle, turning the meatballs, shaping new ones. My sister and I sat on either side, our eyes glued to the meatballs changing color in the pan. From the initial opaque white color, the meatballs gradually turned yellow, spreading a rich aroma throughout the kitchen. When all the meatballs were golden and round, my mother took them out into a large earthenware bowl. My sister and I swallowed our saliva, looked at the meatballs that had just been picked out, then looked at my mother as if pleading.

My mother often knew what she was doing, so she smiled at us, picked up a small bowl for each of us, and said, “Here! Taste it, then go out and see if Dad has anything to do.” I picked up the still-hot piece of ham, blew on it, and put it in my mouth to bite. Oh my god! I will never forget the taste of Mom’s ham! How fragrant, delicious, and creamy it was. The hot ham was soft and melted in my mouth. The ham was not dry like cinnamon ham because it had a lot of beans, and it was fragrant because of the scallions. Usually, after eating the ham, my sister would go out and help Dad, while I would beg to sit on the small chair and watch Mom continue cooking, occasionally looking at Mom as if begging, but Mom always just smiled.

Every Tet, my mother makes a batch of pork sausage like that. There are about four or five medium-sized dishes in total. My mother puts them in a small sieve, placed in a small rope basket, covered with a loose basket and hung in the corner of the kitchen. Every meal, my mother takes out a plate to arrange on the offering tray. Since my family is crowded, pork sausage is a favorite dish of my siblings, so in a flash, the dish of pork sausage is gone. I usually put two or three pieces in my bowl to save some, then slowly dip it in a strong fish sauce and eat sparingly to preserve the pork sausage flavor for a longer time during the Tet meal. One time, I brought a small stool, climbed on the stool, and tiptoed to reach the basket hanging with pork sausage in the kitchen. I picked up a pork sausage, tiptoed down, and my mother went into the kitchen. My legs went limp, I dropped the sausage on the ground and burst into tears. My mother came closer, smiled softly, picked up another ham and gave it to me, saying: “Be quiet! Next time, don’t climb anymore or you’ll fall.” I took the ham my mother gave me, tears still streaming down my face.

Growing up, having traveled to many places, and eaten many Tet dishes of the countryside, I have understood and loved more of my mother's cha phong dishes. Sometimes, I wondered about the name of this dish. What is cha phong? Or is it cha bou? When I asked, my mother said she didn't know. This dish, whose name is so simple and crude, is actually a Tet dish of the poor, of a time of hardship. If you calculate carefully, this dish has three parts beans and one part meat. Only with dishes like this can my mother bring joy to a whole group of children during Tet. There is nothing so delicious, so noble, so rare!

Yet, every time Tet is near, my heart is filled with smoke from the kitchen, my eyes are stinging with the smell of scallions, my soul is filled with the image of my mother and I gathered around a pan of pork sausage on a fire crackling in the dry north wind. Another Tet is coming to every home. This is also the first Tet I no longer have my mother. But I will make my mother's pork sausage again as a habit, as a memory of the distant seasons, the old Tet. I tell myself that. Outside, the north wind seems to be starting to warm up.

Nguyen Van Song

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