In the heavens

QTO - There are skies that can be seen through the eyes of memory, where the paper kites of childhood float in the deep blue of a time that will never return. Those were the summer afternoons when my friends and I ran barefoot on the dirt road at the beginning of the village, holding high the paper kites that my father had carved from bamboo frames and my mother had pasted with old newspaper pieces. My father told me, "Take a pen and write down your dreams, use glue to stick them on the paper kites, they will give wings to your dreams to fly far away." Those were clumsy, innocent dreams. I wished to become a pilot to fly to every corner of the country, to become an artist to paint the sky of my dreams, to have clouds drifting lazily under the warm sunlight, to have a happy home with my parents. Every time the paper kite flew, my heart also flew with the gentle wind, fragile like an unnamed aspiration, carrying with it the clumsy wishes of the small children in the countryside back then.

When I was a little older, I understood the hardships my parents had to go through to raise us. In addition to teaching, my mother also worked many other jobs. From early morning, she got up early to pick bunches of vegetables and pickle jars of pickled spinach to sell at the market, saving money to raise us. My father worked overtime until late at night, his face showing obvious fatigue but still shining with joy because he knew his children were well-behaved.

I have never forgotten the look in my parents’ eyes the day they saw me off at the ferry to go to the city to study at university. They were not wet with tears, they just silently watched me walk as if I was the whole sky to them. I carried that look with me all these years since I left the small village, during the nights studying until dawn, during the first interview and until I was promoted to company manager. Without my parents, I could not “fly”. My parents were like an awning that protected us from the sun and rain, allowing us to fly further on our career path. They stood below, watching my steps every day.

Until I realized my dream, even though I was not a pilot, I still traveled to every corner of the country, I saw how wonderful my homeland was with “The fragrant fields/The vast roads/The red rivers heavy with alluvium” (Nguyen Dinh Thi). I stood on the high mountain peaks in Ha Giang , where white clouds covered the path and the cat-ear rocks were as sharp as the wounds of time; I once walked in the middle of Truong Son forest, listening to the falling leaves like the whispers of souls that had not yet rested.

I sat on a small boat in the middle of the Perfume River in the late afternoon, when the water surface was a brilliant orange color like a silk strip flowing through the centuries. And standing under the red flag with a yellow star fluttering in Ca Mau Cape, listening to the birdsong, watching the sun rise from the East Sea and set into the West Sea, I seemed to see the complete shape of the Fatherland in every breeze.

I met an old soldier in Quang Tri who had held a gun during the war against the US to save the country, sitting mending nets in front of the sea gate. He said that during the bombing, only a few people survived in the village. But no one left the village. They stayed, rebuilding each wall, each house, as if their blood had mixed with the soil. Those stories made me understand that to have the sky today, countless people had to live forever underground. And the peace I am enjoying is not a cheap price of blood, tears and burning love for the Fatherland.

“Above the heavens” is sometimes another way of saying aspiration. For me, that heaven is the highest limit that my heart can reach, if I dare to dream and dare to live with it to the end.

Mr. Duc

Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/van-hoa/202509/tren-nhung-tang-troi-d9e1a0d/