Always love the kitchen

How many summers have passed since I left that peaceful countryside to wander, back and forth through the years. I have gone through many ups and downs, storms... I have had afternoons burying my face in my lonely hands to sip the salty taste of desolation, missing something unknown. In the midst of that emptiness and uncertainty, rummaging through distant memories... I was startled to encounter the strong smell of smoke, the smell of ashes buried in rice husks in my mother's simple kitchen.

Illustration: LE NGOC DUY

Perhaps, for those whose childhood was closely associated with the countryside, the kitchen always gives us a cozy, peaceful feeling of the late afternoon, when the smoke from the kitchen wafts into the space, the simple rustic meal is filled with the laughter of children. Mother's kitchen evokes many peaceful memories of the days that will never come again. The pot of fragrant sticky rice and the pot of braised fish with salty pickles on a stormy day, the wind blowing from all sides, the cold... The pot of sweet potatoes is still steaming, the fire licking around the pot, flickering, evoking and cherishing the warmth.

My mother's kitchen was simple, with soot covering the door and fire burning three times a day. That was the world of my childhood hidden in a small corner. A black tripod, a few old aluminum pots hanging on the side of the brown wooden cupboard... I remember clearly, there was also a chicken coop in the corner of the kitchen. A chicken was quietly incubating a few pink eggs under its belly, waiting for the day when its chicks would peck out. A ceramic jar of water, a coconut shell ladle neatly placed on top.

In the depths of my memory, the poor kitchen is a place that holds countless memories. Every month, my mother cycled to the food store to receive rice and food. All year round, rice was mixed with cassava and sweet potatoes. At a very young age, I learned to cook and take care of my younger siblings. During the drizzly, windy days, to cook a pot of rice and a kettle of water, I shed tears because of the smoke. The pot of steamed rice and sweet potatoes in my memory is a haunting memory. How many times was the fire not enough to cook the rice, and my mother scolded me...

There were months when there was no rice, my children ate only instant noodles. That corner of the kitchen witnessed many times when I sobbed because the instant noodles would not cook... My youngest brother cried in my arms. There were seasons when we had to cut down on potatoes and vegetable shoots to save our children from starvation, when my mother and I gave our rice to our two younger siblings... That corner of the kitchen also became my friend who comforted me many times when I was dissatisfied with something. How strange! When I was a child, where did all my tears come from? When I missed my father, I stood in the corner of the kitchen and cried.

Mother scolded, bowed her head to her knees, holding a pair of chopsticks and poking at the red coals, crying! Angry at her two younger brothers, she quietly scooped rice and cried! Now, when passing through peaceful countrysides, seeing smoke from someone's kitchen drifting in the fading afternoon sun, my heart aches with nostalgia for the kitchen. How many people were born, grew up and matured from trays of food made from a kitchen that was once hard-working and difficult. Nowadays, in the countryside, there are fewer and fewer thatched houses and old kitchens. The time of modern kitchens is probably also less and less of happy and sad stories around the red fire with a pot of banh tet on New Year's Eve...

Mother's kitchen is the place where we grow up. So that everyone knows that from a simple and ordinary place, the happiest days have come. The noisy and luxurious city can hardly make us forget the evening meals, the blue smoke curling around the thatched roof and floating in the gradually enveloping sunset.

How can I forget the pungent smell of smoke, for days later that smell still lingers on my hair and clothes. As the years pass, when my hair turns the color of the afternoon, my fairy-tale years are only in my memories, I whisper that it is the smell of nostalgia. The smell of nostalgia is deeply imprinted in my subconscious. Amidst all the glitz and glamour, there are times when I feel sad and heartbroken. I fear that one day the simple and dear things will easily be forgotten.

The old house is now home to only me. The wood stove is gone....My younger brother carries the pungent smell of smoke far away. My hair has more silver strands. My father also went on a long trip. Missing him, I no longer have the kitchen to hide and cry in. The back porch has been deserted for nearly ten years now...

The afternoon gradually fell. Suddenly the wandering wind blew into my heart the peaceful smell of kitchen smoke, bringing back memories of the beloved old days. Somewhere in the deep, there was a flickering fire, a red-hot charcoal stove that lit up a simple, sweet happiness.

Thien Lam

Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/thuong-hoai-chai-bep-194464.htm