Go home for Tet

During the Tet holiday this year, I returned to my hometown to burn incense for my parents. It is strange that after decades away from home, before they passed away, they still had a burning desire to be buried in their hometown. Yet, after many years, their children and grandchildren have finally been able to fulfill that wish.

I was able to relive the Tet atmosphere of my old hometown. The night was still filled with the scent of grapefruit flowers, blackberry flowers and other flowers... gentle yet pure, vaguely allowing me to discover a strange yet familiar feeling in my heart. In the backyard, the rustling sound of banana leaves rubbing against each other, whispering softly as if reminding me of very small but extremely important things, even though sometimes patched up and forgotten, but every time I encounter them, I cannot help but be moved.

The stories amidst the scent of flowers in the deep night are always stories of relatives, of our ancestors in the past, although life was very deprived, everyone was poor, but why were they so kind, caring and loving, even willing to sacrifice food and clothes. To the point that we always think that our generation cannot treat each other as well as the previous generation. There is one thing that really confuses me, when life is getting more and more prosperous, people often easily distance themselves, there is a lot of jealousy and calculation of gains and losses even among relatives...

Go home for Tet

Country road - Photo: Giac Ngo Online

For many people who live far away from home and cannot return, Tet is always a time of deep sadness for their homeland. Tet is still an opportunity not only for the family but also for relatives, meeting and visiting is also a happy reunion.

I was really emotional when I saw on my parents' tombstones two vases of fresh longevity flowers and before that were fruits and a box of cakes on the tombstones left at the end of the year from the first days of the year; even the brothers in the countryside did not know who it belonged to, they had done such a silent but meaningful thing for me. I did not say it out loud but deep down I felt proud, how did my parents live when they were alive that relatives still kept such precious feelings.

On the way out to burn incense, passing the ditches, in spring, the grass is green again, cows are slowly grazing on the ditches. The first days of the year in the countryside, the drizzle is lingering, the spring rain is not enough to wet people's shoulders but the weather is so cold that I have to put on two warm coats.

On the barren, windy fields, the coldness was doubled. Suddenly, I saw some children herding cows in thin clothes, huddled on the road, some of them were leaning against the wall of a grave to escape the cold. I couldn't help but feel sad, images from decades ago suddenly awakened.

In life, we often get used to looking up, that image silently reminds me that there are times when I need to look down. For decades, on Tet holiday, there are still children herding cows shivering in the cold, full of sympathy.

Suddenly I remembered the verses of poet Trieu Phong, who spent his childhood herding cows in Ru Tram on the northern bank of Thach Han River. He is no longer here, but he left behind poems about his homeland that are enough to stir up a deep love for his parents and his homeland:

“... The cowherd child followed his mother through many arduous journeys/ Dad, are you surprised/ The cowherd child can write poetry/... If he didn't herd cows in his childhood/ How would he have crossed the slope of Con Kho into the Tram forest/ How would he have known how to pick sim wood tied with deep green evening forks/ And how would he have seen the purple color hidden in the thorny bushes...”.

Each person's cow herding childhood is also closely tied to a place, a different love and hardship, especially tied to a flower and tree endemic to the countryside that poet Trieu Phong has witnessed from his poor childhood of cow herding years. And from that place, in that situation, poetry took off, flew up with the belief in life: "...I sing with flowers throughout the search / Oh afternoon flowers / Stay green like a missed love...". The two ending lines are sad but not at all tragic, reading them makes you feel a sense of immense sadness.

Those verses are a warm comfort to me in the midst of my compassionate thoughts.

The same goes for a cup of tea in the morning, next to the apricot blossom tree, yellow with time but not faded at all, pure like the leaves, flowers and grass, without worries, only knowing how to give people their feelings. The sound of people greeting each other and wishing each other a Happy New Year outside the gate is repeated, making me feel happy too. I miss my hometown's Tet so much. I feel sorry for those who, on the journey of making a living in a foreign land, have never once returned to celebrate Tet in their old village.

Ho Si Binh

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