Old garden in the season of falling fruit

The sound of a mango falling, seemingly so simple, but retaining a whole time of green that seemed to have passed away.

Even in folk rituals, Vietnamese people have the habit of listening or “watching for fallen fruit”. Not only to preserve the sweetest, most fragrant part of the fruit of their homeland, but also as a silent ritual to understand the laws of heaven and earth. In the Central region, people consider the areca fruit falling at the right time of the wedding ceremony as a good omen. In the South, mango, plum, guava... when falling are reserved to make jam, cook sweet soup, as a way to preserve the most natural thing. Fallen fruit is a gift from the earth, from heaven. The person who bends down to pick it up, cherishes it, is a person who is grateful for the harvest, understands the laws of nature.

I grew up in a garden with many seasonal fruits like that. There was a mango tree in the back garden, in the North it is called muom, quéo. Where I live, there is a mango tree growing in the middle of the yard, barren but resilient, appearing only after a rain, stretching out its green leaves and spreading its shade through the years. My mother said that mango variety has small fruit, thin flesh, large seeds, when eaten raw it is sour enough to make you frown, but when ripe it is sweet like a word of forgiveness. The sweetness of that fruit is not sold in the market, not in the supermarket with stamps and barcodes. It stays in the foliage, in the yard, present right in the corner of the garden, in the sleeves of the children sitting under the tree, eager and silent.

Back then, I believed that ripe mangoes only fell at noon. When the birds stopped chirping and the sun stopped being so harsh, the sky seemed to have just taken a break. I once sat motionless like that, watching a mango fall, thinking it was the sound of a season just passing by.

Some people pick the fruit when it is still green, forcing it to ripen the way they want. As if life must follow the hurried rhythms set by humans, not the silent laws of heaven and earth. They start something when their hearts are still agitated and end something else when they are not calm enough to look back.

I have seen many fruits fall after summer. Some fall whole, intact, and golden. Some break open, revealing ripe flesh. Or far away, there are fruits with tanned skin, with a few drops of sap still oozing from the stem. Waiting for a hand to know how to bend down and pick them up quietly. I used to sit motionless like that, watching a mango that had just fallen as if I had never seen a season of falling in my life, even though I spent my entire childhood under the shade of a tree, with fruits falling all over my head. Every season, my brothers and I would lie down and wait, looking forward.

I don’t remember how old I was the last time I sat under a mango tree. I only know that when I returned, the mango tree was old, its trunk was hollow, its leaves were sparse, and our old friends had all gone their separate ways. We no longer had the pleasure of sitting and waiting for a mango to fall and cheering as if we had just caught summer in our hands. The neighborhood kids now ate until they were bored, and didn’t even bother to look at the mangoes they picked from the tree, so no one was interested in picking up fallen mangoes like we used to.

Now, thanks to advanced technology, people can grow mangoes several times a year, and their income is thus increased. However, the image of children waiting under the mango tree to pick up the fruit with their laughter gradually disappears, and the season of mangoes falling also drifts away. Nowadays, such childhood gardens are actually becoming less and less. Children grow up to the sound of telephone rings more than the sound of birds cooing at noon, more than the smell of ripe fruit. All are being replaced by nameless haste. Because now most of the fruit is picked when it is still young, carefully wrapped, and refrigerated. People no longer have time to wait for something to come by itself. Only that falling sound remains. Because somewhere, there is still someone growing a mango tree in the garden, to hear again the silent falling sound of a life that was once very real.

People say that memories of life are slow falling fragments. I am not sure about that, I only understand that there are things that cannot be held back, nor can they be left behind immediately. It is still there, as quiet as the sound of a mango falling in an empty yard, as the smell of the soil after the rain, as the sunlight drying a time of childhood... This afternoon, I heard the sound of the old year falling again. No children ran out to pick it up. Only I sat still, listening to an honest thing in the fragrant garden.

Source: https://baogialai.com.vn/vuon-xua-mua-trai-rung-post326367.html