Warm winter fire

My mother's voice urged me to run quickly into the kitchen to warm my hands and feet. I smiled at my mother's concern and suddenly felt happy. After so many years, in my mother's eyes, I was still a little child who needed to be loved, protected and sheltered. The fire in my mother's kitchen had been burning for a while, each flame flickering and crackling. A warm atmosphere enveloped the space, mother and daughter whispering and telling stories.

The kitchen is the place I miss the most when winter comes. Before, when my family was still poor, the kitchen was just a small kitchen in a “thatched house with bamboo walls”. That place was covered with black soot all year round, the wind blew fiercely, the rain dripped heavily and the sun penetrated through.

I remember every winter, I often lingered around the red fire. On cold winter mornings, the first thing I did when I woke up was to run down to the kitchen - where my mother always got up early to light the fire, warm her body, and then go to the well to wash her face. I always wished that the moment sitting by the fire would last forever because I didn't want to leave the red fire.

And there were times when I was naively jealous of my mother because she was the one who went in and out of the kitchen the most, not knowing that she was always busy preparing meals for her husband and children. I really miss the breakfasts when the whole family gathered around the small fire, next to a pot of soft potatoes, cassava or a bowl of hot fried rice with fried pork fat.

Regardless of the wind blowing outside, the whole family gathered in the kitchen to eat and chat. My father often went to collect firewood and piled it up in the kitchen to prepare for the cold weather. When it rained, the family would still have firewood to cook. My father told a story about the old days when he followed my grandfather into the forest to chop down pieces of firewood to sell at the market to buy rice. Winter made my father's feet bruised, dry and cracked like fields in October. There were times when it was so cold that my father and everyone else had to use dry wood to make a fire at the edge of the forest to warm up. Once they were a little warm, they continued to collect firewood, working nonstop. My grandfather's kitchen was never short of firewood because the firewood my father brought back was piled up. At the end of the story, my father always smiled and said: those days were hard but so much fun.

Time flies so fast. My father expanded the old kitchen into a clean and tidy place, but he still did not forget to leave a small space for my mother to cook on the wood stove. Partly because of habit, partly because my parents still liked the warmth of the wood stove. Thanks to that, every time I return, I can still feel the warm, passionate fire, the smoke stinging my eyes but very familiar.

How peaceful my heart feels every time I think about the warm winter fire, the warmth of mother, father, and family love.