( Quang Ngai Newspaper) - 1. The midnight call from my neighbor informing me that my father was hospitalized made me cry like a baby. It was the first time in my life that I cried like that.
After finishing my work, I took a bus back to my hometown. During the journey of more than eight hundred kilometers, my mind was filled with thoughts and worries. How was my father's illness? Was it very serious? Then, in the following days and months, would I have to stay in my hometown to take care of him or would I return to the city to continue my work and fulfill my unfinished dream, since there were only two of us at home.
2. The hospital corridor was crowded with people early in the morning. People in white coats were in a hurry. Patients' families were equally anxious and worried. I turned and ran. The third floor cardiology department appeared before my eyes. I rushed in as soon as I saw the room number in front of me. Tears suddenly flowed.
Father lay on the bed covered with pale blue sheets. His eyes were closed. His breathing was labored. He seemed to have been crying. I saw that his eyes were wet.
- Dad is fine, why do you come home and delay your work?
I sat next to my father. Hesitantly, I held the bony, wrinkled hand of the man in his early sixties. I noticed that my father had lost a lot of weight, especially after his only daughter decided to stay in the city to find a job instead of returning to her hometown after graduating from university.
- I can't make a living by going back to my hometown with a meager salary! I angrily blurted out a few words without restraint while my father was busy shoveling sand, carrying broken bricks, and carrying cement to patch up a slope that had just collapsed due to the first heavy rain of the season.
- But I can be near you! Your voice was breathless and helpless.
I felt guilty for displeasing my father, but I couldn't listen to him. It was very difficult to find a job in the province in my field of study. Sometimes I had to accept working in a different field or being unemployed for a long time. The day I packed my bags and left home, my father tried to act happy, but I knew he was very sad.
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| MH: VO VAN |
3. I am a somewhat stubborn daughter. From the time I was little, I always kept my distance from my father, and I still do. I cannot explain this. On the contrary, my father took care of me unconditionally. He did not even let me do the laundry or cook. He told me to just focus on studying well and he would be happy.
My father was very proud of me. I was always at the top of my class, and was an excellent student in the province for many years. Certificates of merit filled my drawers. My father bragged to everyone he met. He promised to give me a more fulfilling and happier life than now. That was why he never complained about anything. My father worked hard all day long. The barren fields of corn and sweet potatoes grew well. The fields on the hillside with unstable irrigation water still bore rice. The garden in front of the house was always green, and there were vegetables to eat in every season. My father also worked for others, doing whatever was asked of him. From the fields to the fields. From planting acacia to planting cassava.
I lived in the joy of books, the results of each school year were always higher than the previous year, achievement after achievement. My father was getting older and older. At night, he often tossed and turned because of coughing and chest pain. In the middle of the night, he would get up to rub oil, warm himself up, or go out to the yard to look around for a while, then come back in and gently close the door. I didn't seem to care much about this. If I thought about it, I would think that my father had trouble sleeping.
The day I received the news that I had passed the university entrance exam, my father was not home. I ran to look for him. He was busy tidying up and clearing the grass around the graves in the cemetery at the foot of the hill, on the left side of the village. Under the scorching summer weather, he looked like a small and pitiful shadow. I stood beside him, moved, and spoke with trembling voice. My father dropped the grass in his hand to the ground, stared at me, joy bursting in his eyes.
- Let's go home, son! Dad urged.
On the way home, my father talked more than usual, and I just walked silently because my heart was filled with anxiety.
4. My village is small, with only a hundred houses. From afar, they look like bird nests clinging to the foot of the mountain. The people of my village live together, united and loving, sharing joys and sorrows, comforting and encouraging each other. That is also the thing that reassures me most when working away from home. My father also reassured me, with relatives and neighbors, we will help each other in times of need, don't worry too much!
- Who is my mother, father? I asked him this question many times. When I was little, I received a hasty, concealed answer from my father:
- Mom works far away and won't be back until Tet!
I believed my father's words without hesitation, calculating the days and months. When I saw Mr. Thien's mai tree blooming in the neighborhood below, when Mrs. Tinh came to the house to ask for some banana leaves to wrap banh tet, I felt sick to my stomach, thinking that my mother would be back soon. But she was still nowhere to be seen. The small house was all alone with my father and me all year round. The older I got, the less I talked. Meals were eaten hastily. My father smoked more and more, especially on cold, rainy days. The smoke mixed with the steam filled the house.
- I feel so sorry for him, a single father raising a child, and an illegitimate child at that...!
People whispered to me when my father and I stopped by the grocery store to buy things. I was stunned, asked my father, but he turned away instead of answering. I was angry with him and refused to eat or drink anything. He tried to coax and beg me in every way, but in the end he gave in and told me the truth.
I was an unfortunate child among dozens of abandoned children that my father picked up and brought to the temple to take care of. I looked cute and adorable, so my father adopted me. He whispered to me and gently combed my hair. My father said that when he went through the adoption process, many people objected. Because he was a man and lived alone, the wound he brought back from the K battlefield ached every time the weather changed.
I was very sad, but in front of my father I always acted tough, talking and laughing to the point that my father was surprised and asked me questions. I tried to make my face as bright as possible, telling him that I only needed my father, then secretly wandered around the markets and pagodas in the district to find out what the woman who was my mother was doing and where she was.
5. The cemetery on the full moon day of the seventh lunar month is desolate and deserted. The path leading from the hamlet to the fields is crossed by a few motorbikes. People going to the mountains or down to the fields also walk silently. The priest prepares offerings and brings them to the center of the cemetery to burn incense so that the monks at the temple can pray for the souls of the little souls.
I looked at my father, moved:
- Did any of the parents of those unfortunate children go to the cemetery, dad?
- Yes, son. They're back. Dad nodded, sadly.
- But how to find the child you abandoned. Many people regretted, cried, and complained. Some even gave their father money to burn incense for them.
I was lost in thought, and since then I have not been upset or wondered why my father has been doing work that was not his duty for nearly thirty years, since before I was born.
Father stared at the sunset that was falling, covering the space, bringing everything gradually into the night, disappearing in an instant.
6. Near December 22, my father's old unit contacted each other to meet and organize a search for the graves of comrades still scattered in the forests of neighboring countries. A veteran came to the house. My father was very happy and asked me to boil water to make tea. The two people who had been through life and death could not stop talking. Stories about happy memories between the two battles, the counterattacks, and the times when they brought wounded comrades back to the rear.
In the conversation between the two of them, I vaguely heard the names of places that I had first heard of in the land of pagodas: Oyadao, Ban Lung, Borkeo, Strung-Treng... Then the conversation suddenly calmed down when my father sadly mentioned the erasure of the 547th peak cluster located on the Dang-Rech mountain range that the Polpot army had chosen as the base for the Vietnamese volunteer army. During this campaign, many comrades had fallen, some had left behind body parts or their bodies could not be found to be brought back to the unit cemetery, to their homeland and family.
Also through the veteran, I learned that my father had a beautiful love affair with a nurse. The loving promises took place on moonlit nights under the forest canopy, by the stream. The dreams of a small house, with children's laughter, were also woven from many meetings and confessions. But then...
My father's friend said nothing more, looking up at my father. My father remained silent. But I knew my father's heart was in turmoil. The beautiful memories of our wartime love were always present and helped my father become stronger in this life full of worries. I couldn't help my father much, even saying a few loving words was difficult. Perhaps my father didn't blame me, so he always treated me sincerely and always hoped that the best things in life would be given to his daughter who had suffered early.
7. On the fifth day, my father insisted on going home, because the fields, pigs, chickens, and the cemetery had no one to burn incense for him, so it was very lonely. My father could not walk steadily and needed someone to help him. I was also anxious because the company had a new project, and the department head called to urge me. With the intuition of a father who understood his son too well, my father spoke up to save me from embarrassment:
- Getting a good job these days is not easy, you should try to get in, the company is waiting for you!
I was washing clothes for my father, stopped, looked up at him as if wanting to hear more of what he had to say. He looked so pitiful at that moment. He was skinny in his old, wrinkled clothes.
- I know! I tried to hold back my tears. But my nose started to sting.
I went to the cemetery alone, quietly walking among the fates that had not yet seen the sun and were buried in the heavy afternoon. The small, hidden graves, the crude headstones made me unable to hold back my tears. I thought about the mother I did not know, who might one day find her.
I had to go back to my hometown to work to take care of my father and help him burn incense at this special cemetery. A thought suddenly flashed through my mind as I watched the embers fly high from the pile of votive paper someone had just burned. I muttered a prayer and turned around.
As soon as I reached the top of the hill, I saw my father standing at the end of the lane. His shadow silently blended with the shadow of the mountain, magnificent and tolerant.
CEILING PAINT
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Source: https://baoquangngai.vn/van-hoa/van-hoc/202412/truyen-ngan-tinh-cha-ede14cb/
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