Welcome to Vietnam Education Promotion Day (October 2): The road and the window

(Baonghean) - It is a road, like many other country roads, but every time I pass by, stepping on it, I still feel choked up. This road here, 50 years ago, every morning, my father, with bare feet, walked alone with the wind, the cold, the pouring rain...

The way to school. Photo from internet

Once I asked my father: Why aren't you afraid, when you're alone on the road since 4am? My father said: Yes, there were times when I was afraid of the darkness behind me, afraid of the howling wind, afraid of the vastness ahead... However, every time like that, I thought of the flickering fire on the stove, my grandmother had gotten up at 3am to cook rice or boil potatoes for me to eat at school. I thought of her hands sifting each grain of rice, each grain of bran for the early market, collecting money to pay for school fees, the gentle shaking: Wake up, the rooster is crowing, my child! I thought of the drops of sweat soaking my grandfather's back in the low-lying fields. And his stern voice: “No matter how difficult it is, you must study. Our family is poor, your younger sisters had to drop out of school early to let their older brothers go to school, you cannot be discouraged...” My father walked 15 kilometers every day on his calloused and sometimes bleeding feet to study in high school. Later, when my father was considered a successful man, and my grandparents had passed away, my father still reminded us to bow our heads before the rough, calloused hands of my aunts. He said: It was those hands that helped me reach my dream and have today.

I remember, when I was in primary school, every time I carried my bag to school, I would look over to the neighbor's window, because I knew there were the round, black eyes of my friend who had lost her parents and had been paralyzed since childhood watching me. One time, my friend's eyes filled with tears as she told her grandmother: "I want to go to school like her!" And every morning I went to class with a vague sadness, with a feeling of pity and guilt...

The school bell rang loudly, urging us students to rush into class. The lessons began, the teacher taught us things that were extremely new and attractive. Her voice recited poems so smooth and soft! The poems talked about grandmother's coconut trees, about grandfather's sore leg, about parents and everything around us, about things that we see every day, but often do not feel their full meaning... In my heart, I really wanted to tell that shy orphan friend all the joys from the lesson, about her expressive voice, about the difficult but interesting math problem I had just found the answer to, about the polar bears living in the North Pole, penguins in the South Pole, the first person to discover America... I often imagined in that small window, the little girl looking up at the vast sky and longing for something.

For many years in my life, I have always thought about the dream of the orphan girl in the window. I know that knowledge is not a measure of a person's value, but it opens many doors for us to step into life on a wide open road. The orphan girl's small window, maybe there she can still find a way to live, a happy life, but from the beginning it denied her many choices. And moreover, knowledge will give us the strength and skills necessary to live, even give our emotions a reason, so that they become clear and have a positive tendency.

That is why many times, I could not hold back my tears when I learned about the fates of orphans, poor families who had to drop out of school, children who instead of going to school had to work hard with adults to make a living. And I also understood why, how many people I met, they had to press their feet on so many steep passes, cross so many rivers and streams to reach the end of the letter. Their feet were bleeding, like my father's feet in the past, with the desire to see a wider sky.

I am sure that, for any of us, a window like the one where the little girl with round black eyes used to sit is too small. The sky is so big, and we need bigger windows. Windows that are opened with love, and so much affection, sometimes just by rough, calloused hands like my aunts'...

Nghe An weekend