Winter Warmth

(Baonghean) - “Winter is like a father, there are many fires in the heart...”, I remembered this song when last winter, when I went on a business trip to Ky Son district, I happened to meet a miserable, sad man holding a two-year-old girl, standing as if waiting for someone by the deserted stream bank. The villagers said that his wife had been swept away by a flash flood, leaving behind three small children. Many twilight afternoons, missing his wife, he would carry his youngest daughter to the stream bank... Perhaps, in his heart, he still firmly believed that one day, his beloved wife would return!

Warm fire night in Ky Son. Photo: TH

It seems that everyone is immersed in the memory of winter. My mother told me that the first winter of my life was when the US army intensified its bombing of the North. My mother and I took shelter in an A-shaped bunker, halfway up a red hill in Vinh Linh, Quang Tri. The winter winds of the Northeast blew through the bunker door, which was covered by a military tarpaulin. Every night, flares from the southern bank of the Ben Hai River shone brightly, and the ground shook with bombs from planes and gunboats that destroyed life. My mother held me and lay curled up in the bunker paved with casuarina tree trunks, praying that the anti-aircraft artillery position where my father was fighting would shoot down an American plane. In the middle of an artillery attack, my mother had to leave me alone in that bunker to go and help the wounded... I cried out in fear, on that first winter night of my life.

Winter is like a harsh test of nature for humans in terms of endurance, separation and separation; that if we overcome our own loneliness, we will reach joy, opening our hearts to everyone. It is not by chance that Winter is the time when people often choose to hold wedding ceremonies. Perhaps in ancient history, when the freezing winter came, when retreating into deep caves to escape the cold and avoid wild animals, humans came closer to each other, relying on each other's warmth. And from that day, they realized a very simple thing, something that we also realize now: The meaning of life is not just hunting, marching to conquer or compete, but love is what makes humans happy!

Every winter, we realize a few simple things, that we are so small in this world, just a Northeast monsoon, a cold air is enough to make us shiver. And only by coming closer to each other, leaning on each other, sharing and loving can we add more life energy, joy, and dispel the sadness that is always present in a hidden corner of each person.

In the winter, going up to the highlands, I looked at the roads immersed in frost, winding through many mountain peaks, and the images of skinny, dark children, wearing thin clothes in the villages I passed, sowed in my heart endless thoughts about the road ahead. There will be many more winters... Like this winter, I and the white-haired artist walked among the yellow mustard flower fields by the Lam River. The warm and peaceful yellow mustard flowers suddenly reminded me of the story of the man in Ky Son holding his child and waiting forever by the deserted stream. Both the artist and I were sure that his beloved wife would return...!

Hoai Quan