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Spring Mother's Kitchen

ASTRONOMY January 26, 2025 11:30

I sat on the back steps of the kitchen, looking back at the old Tet lands and imagining the days ahead. I longed to soon return to light the spring fire with my mother.

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Peaceful scene in mother's warm kitchen

On spring days in my hometown, is there any scene more peaceful than a clear morning, with the blue smoke rising from the kitchen filled with the scent of Tet?

In the cool, spring sunshine, the sparrows chirped and hopped from the roof tiles to the fragrant yard filled with flowers and grass. What could be more relaxing than waking up after a carefree sleep and seeing it's already a new year?

Then lingered and sat quietly in my mother's kitchen, listening to the bells of memories ringing in my soul.

Wandering tirelessly through the four seasons, anchoring ourselves in the streets and on the long roads, we only wish to return to our childhood home every spring, warming our fingers over the ashes of the stove. The wooden cupboard in the corner of the kitchen holds the flavors of the years. Its old shape reminds us of when we were young, like a young bird, coming home from school, tiptoeing to find cold rice and the piece of braised fish that our mother had saved.

Every December, my mother prepares enough onions, pepper, fish sauce, and salt, neatly arranged in a wooden cupboard. She gathers a lot of dry leaves to make a fire. The square coals next to the pile of firewood still smell of tree resin. My mother says that during Tet, the house must not lack fire. The soft banana leaves that my mother cut from the front garden are placed next to the pot of fragrant white sticky rice. The thin bundle of bamboo strips, all are prepared by my mother for wrapping banh chung on the 30th of Tet, and the crackling fire on New Year's Eve.

At the end of December, the warm kitchen will be filled with the fragrant aroma of cakes and jams from mother's hands calling Tet home. The golden cakes, blooming like spring flowers, are rich in rustic sweetness and the fatty aroma of chicken eggs.

The cakes were arranged by mother in a tray with many small compartments, next to coconut jam and ginger jam. Guests were invited by mother with a tray of cakes and jams imbued with the sweet and rich taste of the land, sipping hot tea, floating in the warm, smoky air. The table was placed next to the window frame opening up to the vast early spring sunlight. In front of the house, the pot of marigolds skillfully painted the spring colors on the yellow petals, gently playing with the fresh wind of the early season. The spring silhouette swayed under the roof, still covered with dry straws that birds had picked up to make nests. The bottom of the person's eyes sparkled with joy, looking out to the yard as if covered with a layer of honey sunlight, the leaves tilted...

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Many people's childhood is associated with their mother's cozy kitchen welcoming Tet and enjoying spring.

I grew up from the primitive warmth of my mother’s kitchen. Then I realized, there is no corner of the world that gives me more peace of mind than that place. The fire in that kitchen is also the source, a vast halo of light that draws the path for me to return to my mother’s homeland, to return to my heart in the depths of longing and forgetting and the rapids and vicissitudes of life. In spring, I feel nostalgic when I realize the wisps of smoke drifting into my mother’s hair, at some point they have stayed and woven into the threads of time.

In that tearfulness, I met again the old lines of poetry that are forever imprinted in my mind: “Mother’s shirt has been faded by tears for two seasons. I am a bird that misses my mother all my life. I am a wandering bird that returns”…

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Spring Mother's Kitchen