In the quiet city...

After more than 20 years of living in Tam Ky, I have realized that I love this land in a strange way. In the morning, I sat drinking coffee with a student who had just returned from the dusty industrial city and said that breathing here was so easy.

Surely, I and many residents of this city have been able to breathe easily with so many trees and grasses since ancient times without realizing it. My city is still as small as the town I first lived in, my friends lived here, and our children were born and grew up here without ever being stratified into top and bottom.

The first time I left Tam Ky in 2002 to go back to Hue to study, I wrote the article “Missing Tam Ky” with the lingering scent of milk flowers on Huynh Thuc Khang Street in my heart. That nostalgia, not to the point of being excruciating, but entangled with the scents of affection that I could not name.

This simple land, every road, every street corner, every row of trees seems to have not changed over the years. I love the leisurely winter afternoons sitting on the small attic with an old friend at the coffee shop near the city square.

I love the early mornings playing with the children along the Ban Thach River watching the sunrise. I love the quiet moments of contemplation watching the sparrows chirping in the garden around Da Tuong's house. Our house, fortunately, has enough space for flowers, vegetables, and even for the sparrows on the porch to catch worms and pick rice...

That love has been silently nurtured since the days when the city still had the shadow of a town. There were several times in our lives when we planned to leave Tam Ky and move to a more “livable” place, but then, as if by chance, we were quietly protected and sheltered by our motherland.

This year, the winter has had few long rains. The weather in the early cold season does not bring the cold as usual, but the rows of Su trees in Huong Tra village, Su trees along Tran Hung Dao street, Su trees along Bach Dang street still keep their usual bare leaves. Every day I can leisurely admire that charming winter look. Because on the familiar road to work, my city has never been covered in dust and traffic jams.

I have a friend in the same neighborhood who shares the same hobby of displaying traditional Tet flowers such as gladiolus, marigolds and sometimes just a few clusters of colorful daisies. Those simple flowers seem to strengthen our neighborhood bond, not just at night when the lights go out. Like this morning, when the first light rains of the cold season have just begun, my friend texted me “it feels like Tet is here” when sending me the bright memories of my childhood from the colorful daisies that are being sold at the market gate behind the supermarket.

I no longer have the desire to move to a more livable place after spending more than half of my life attached to the “central” city of the entire country. I belong to Tam Ky as I belong to the city of tranquility that still preserves multi-layered ecological resources.

Perhaps, there will be many friends who are “surprised” when coming to a Tam Ky that is far different from the “sand and sand” spots on the map. But no matter, “the heart in the heart of beloved Quang Nam ” still beats passionately, nurturing the source of “easy breathing” for many people and lives.

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