Mrs. Nguyen Thi Kep - President Ho Chi Minh's grandmother

For each person, besides the love of parents who gave birth to them, grandparents are one of the people who love us the most, the place where we can immerse ourselves in fairy tales, in sweet lullabies, and the place where we are protected when we need it most. As for President Ho Chi Minh, a great loss for him was that when he was born, he no longer had his grandparents; only his grandparents were the ones who devoted all their love to his siblings. In the framework of this article, I only want to talk about his maternal grandmother - Mrs. Nguyen Thi Kep.

Among the books written about President Ho Chi Minh's family, there are very few lines of information about Mrs. Nguyen Thi Kep - His maternal grandmother. However, we can also clearly feel her feelings for her intelligent, obedient grandson and the feelings of her very naughty but also very gentle grandson towards her.

In the book "Uncle Ho's family members" it is written about Mrs. Nguyen Thi Kep as follows: "Mr. Hoang Duong's wife was from Ke Sia village, Hung Dao commune, Hung Nguyen district. She was the daughter of Confucian scholar Nguyen Van Giap, who passed four Bachelor exams. When Mr. Nguyen Van Giap passed the Bachelor exam for the second time, his wife gave birth to their first daughter, so they named her Nguyen Thi Kep..

Just a few short lines, but we can understand that Uncle Ho's maternal grandmother was born into a Confucian family. Until Mr. Hoang Duong (President Ho Chi Minh's maternal grandfather) adopted the boy Nguyen Sinh Sac, educated him, and married his beloved daughter Hoang Thi Loan; then divided the land, built a separate house for her right in the garden... then we can see that Mrs. Nguyen Thi Kep was a tolerant, generous and very benevolent person.

Although living separately but still in the same garden, Uncle Ho's three sisters always lived in the care, protection and love of their grandparents.

In 1895, Nguyen Sinh Sac went to Hue to take the At Vy examination. He failed this exam, so he applied to study at Quoc Tu Giam School, bringing his wife and two sons, Nguyen Sinh Khiem and Nguyen Sinh Cung. At that time, Cung was 5 years old. The story goes that: On the way, everyone saw him happily picking up an areca nut. He raised it to his shirt and wiped it clean. The whole family laughed and mocked him because they thought he mistook it for a lemon, but he politely said: "I know, this is an areca nut, I picked it up to bring home to my grandmother."

In 1901, Mrs. Hoang Thi Loan passed away, and the four father and sons of Mr. Nguyen Sinh Sac returned to Hoang Tru village to take refuge with their grandmother. Now the grandmother's love for her poor grandson, who had lost his mother at an early age, was greater than ever. Among the three grandchildren, Ms. Thanh, Mr. Khiem and Mr. Cung (President Ho Chi Minh), Mrs. Kep ​​loved Mr. Cung the most.

Also in 1901, Nguyen Sinh Sac passed the Pho Bang exam, following local custom, he and his three children returned to his paternal home village of Sen to live. Although they had to be far away from their maternal grandmother (Sen village was about 2 km from Hoang Tru village), the three Cung sisters still visited her regularly. The story goes that one bright moonlit night, missing his late mother and feeling sorry for his lonely grandmother, Cung ran all the way from Sen village to visit his grandmother just to sleep with her for one night and fan her to sleep. Every time he visited his grandmother, despite the village children inviting him to go out, despite the games of kite flying and swimming being his favorites, he still refused his friends to stay home and sweep the yard, sweep the house, and weed the garden for his grandmother.

He always wanted to act like an adult, but his grandmother always looked at him like a three-year-old child who needed to be cuddled, pampered, loved, and pampered. Every time Cung came to visit his grandmother, she had to constantly scold him lovingly: "Are you here to visit grandma or to hoe the grass?", "My puppy is the best", "No one is as good as grandma's grandson". Whenever Mr. Sac or Ms. Thanh were strict with him, she would immediately scold him: "He's still a child, if you keep bullying him, you won't be able to handle it with me",...

We all know that the homeland and family during his childhood contributed to the formation of the great personality of Ho Chi Minh. Among them, we must mention Mrs. Nguyen Thi Kep - his maternal grandmother, who also contributed significantly to the formation of Uncle Ho's personality; contributing to the formation of one of the four important contents in his moral thought: "Love people, live meaningfully, have love".