Touching the memory…

There are things that belong to the past, which we think have long since faded away in the memory of today's modern generation. It turns out that they are not, like many objects that have existed for half a century and are still present here and there, one day we accidentally touch them, and suddenly a whole range of memories bursts into our minds...

The stone mortar, the bronze pot, the wooden cupboard or the pair of shoulder poles worn by the years… Those old yet familiar things are still intact in me along with the childhood memories of growing up with my grandmother, in a three-room wooden house with pillars and cross beams supported by each stone on a clay foundation. The house had no doors but was only covered with bamboo blinds, the main door was a bamboo curtain that opened and closed day and night, supported by two poles.

Like many other families, in that poor neighborhood in the past, almost every house had familiar utensils for daily life and cooking. The shiny black ebony cupboard had many compartments for storing food, bowls and chopsticks. During a hungry childhood, the cupboard was a familiar place where any child would rummage for food every time they came home from school. On the porch was a stone mortar, sometimes used to grind flour to cook cakes, sometimes to pound pork to cook feasts, sometimes to prepare rice to feed chickens. Next to it was a pair of smooth shoulder poles placed on the wall - an indispensable "means of labor" at that time, following their mothers and grandmothers on hundreds of thousands of market days, enduring countless ups and downs in the rain and sun.

I remember that my grandmother especially loved the copper pot with a very wide belly and a slightly flared mouth, which made interesting echoes when tapped. She also had a cast iron kettle that was supposedly given to her by a relative who had worked abroad in the Soviet Union. Even more special was the aluminum pan that my grandfather had forged from a cluster bomb shell, which remained very durable after many years.

Until the house was repaired, my uncle collected a lot of old things, some of which he sold for scrap, some of which he intended to throw away but my grandmother took them back. She said that the pots and pans were not worth much, but they were associated with many memories of her parents and her children. Then she told me that this chicken iron was a wedding gift from a friend, the copper pot that my grandfather gave when they moved out, this aluminum kettle was the same age as my eldest son… Hearing that, my uncle suddenly fell silent, and in order to please my grandmother, he collected everything. Even though many years had passed, those items still lay there like a painful link in time.

Then the day my grandmother followed my grandfather to heaven, I noticed that the first thing my uncle cared about when packing up her belongings was to put away the lime pot, the betel box and the mortar where she used to sit leisurely on the steps every day to make betel. He put everything in an iron chest and kept it carefully for a long time. Perhaps because he was the closest person to her and understood her the most. Therefore, her mementos were also a spiritual "treasure" that my uncle cherished. That's why my grandmother's betel trellis was still cared for by him and remained green all year round.

Every time I visit my uncle, I often recall the familiar items my grandmother kept for a while, all still intact. Later, on her death anniversary, my uncle often took out those "ancient pots" to scrub, use them to cook... as a way to remember and please her.

And I understand that those old objects carry within them the voice, the feelings and the nostalgia of a life that remains forever. So that when we touch them, we touch a whole memory with so much love.