Awakening the Spring
(Baonghean) - Mom, I won't be home for Tet this year. I still have to go to dozens of bosses and department heads who are about to retire. There are so many people eyeing that seat now. If I don't run first, I'd be foolish. Okay, Mom!
- I'll probably be home late, Dad. The whole family should have their New Year's Eve dinner. I still have to go to the class reunion. Some friends are coming back from abroad. If I don't see them now, when will I see them?
- Next year, my wife and I will come back and bring our son to visit our grandparents. My wife and I are also embarrassed about traveling so far. I promise my parents that we will definitely come back next year!
This year I promise to come back next year, next year I hesitate and put it off until the year after.
I don't know since when the Tet reunion has become a responsibility, a time when we have to pay our respects to our loved ones. We indifferently think that our family members are the most forgiving and generous people to us, so if we have to choose between countless concerns, we are willing to make them wait so that we can peacefully pursue fame, wealth or pleasure for ourselves, until we are bored and then leisurely find our way home. Ten years, then twenty years, then when we reach the end of our lives, then we suddenly realize that we have let so many lovely and precious springs slip away from our grasp. Grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters are always waiting for us to gather for a reunion meal, can they wait forever by our side, or will they eventually be driven away by the cycle of nature, birth, aging, sickness and death, or circumstances, and leave us, leaving spring suddenly barren? If life is an ocean and we are sails, then our loved ones are the lighthouses that let our boats know where to anchor. However, how many people in this world know how to be satisfied with the shore or determine when it is time to return, but are always absorbed in wandering the waves, chasing after fame and fortune, which are as frivolous as seashells on the sand. At some point, when we are lost in the vast ocean, when the lighthouses' light has disappeared into the mist, we will realize that our lives do not have many springs, but why do we not know how to love, to cherish, letting them pass by in waste and loneliness.
My boat has been far out at sea for who knows how many seasons, swallows have been flying, perhaps because of the salty, bitter taste of the sea of people, of foreign lands, spring in me has long since died. Or is it that my eyes are dim so I cannot see the green buds, my ears are deaf so I listen forever but cannot see spring coming? Am I old or is spring old? Or is it that the time I set sail, far away from my homeland, family, friends, was also the time when the spring flower that had just bloomed in me quickly withered? Suddenly I miss the afternoon of the 30th of Tet, my eyes are wet and my nose is stinging, as if somewhere still lingers the strong scent of incense that he just lit in the drizzling afternoon. Those days, where can I find them now? My soul is now like a sleeping honeysuckle bud in the dark garden, who will wake it up?
Old friends who grew up together, all of them loved playing with firecrackers, eating banh chung, receiving lucky money on Tet, now each of them goes their separate ways, do we still share the same innocent nostalgia and love mixed with a bit of respect for the old springs? Or when Tet comes, everyone is so engrossed with friends, big and small bosses, red envelopes, how much time do we have to care about the simple, fragrant meals and traditional pleasures and games to enjoy with family? I think like that and secretly sob, cry for me who is far away from home, cry for those who are still lucky enough to be with their loved ones but do not know how to hold on to the fragile, short moments of spring. When will those people awaken to spring?
Hai Trieu (Email from Paris)
