Remember the season of lighting grapefruit seed lamps

(Baonghean) - I suddenly saw Aunt Thanh in the middle of a hot afternoon when I walked out of the pub. At first, I saw a woman with a thin back bending over on the sidewalk of the restaurant, trying to collect the beer cans and plastic bottles scattered in front of her. To push my bike, I used my foot to push the sack placed next to it. Unfortunately, my action caused the sack to tilt, many cans spilled out onto the sidewalk. At this moment, the woman startled and looked up. I was startled: Aunt Thanh?

A corner of Vinh ancient citadel. Photo: Le Thang

But it seemed that on Aunt Thanh’s old, wrinkled face, there was no sign that she recognized an old acquaintance, even though I quickly sat down to help pick up the scraps that had just fallen. And when she pushed her old bicycle away with a jumble of bottles, scraps of paper, and cardboard, I suddenly saw on the handlebars hanging crookedly some dried, peeled grapefruit peels. Memories suddenly flooded back.

At that time, Vinh city was very poor. The poverty of an already small city that was also devastated by years of war. In my memory, Vinh city always appeared dusty and miserable. The low-rise apartment buildings, the roads as thin as threads, every time a horse-drawn carriage passed by, it brought up a musty smell. Then, from many rural areas, many young people flocked to Vinh. Many of them were farmers who came to Vinh and took on the responsibility of rebuilding the city from the rubble of war.

Aunt Thanh is one of those people. She is a country girl from Thanh Chuong. When she came to Vinh, she was still very young, just over 20 years old. And at that time, almost all the men and boys in my mother's office noticed her and were in love with her. Because Aunt Thanh was very pretty. It was rare for a female worker to have white skin, a tall and slim figure, and silky black hair down to her hips. She was also a hard-working, innocent, and kind person.

The single workers in the same company as my mother always seemed to have a secret competition to get Aunt Thanh’s attention. I didn’t know who among the dozens of men “planting love trees” in front of her cramped dormitory, who she liked or was satisfied with, but what I did know was that she was very close to my mother and sisters. That’s why Aunt Thanh often came to my house to visit.

Children in Vinh City play with bubbles. Photo: Le Thang

My aunt taught my sisters to put soapberry in a basin of cold water and dry it in the middle of the summer to wash their hair, and to find lemongrass leaves, basil, and grapefruit flowers to soak their hair. And for me, from the beginning, my aunt taught me how to use grapefruit seeds to make lamps to burn on the Mid-Autumn Festival night. The method is very simple, that is, go find and collect grapefruit seeds, peel off the outer shell, then use steel wire to string their insides into a string, then dry them in the sun, if there is no sun, dry them on the stove until the Mid-Autumn Festival to light the lamp.

At that time, we lived in small collective rooms, and just stepping out of the room could cause us to trip and fall on piles of sand, or get a bump on the head from the many broken bricks and tiles piled up in the construction unit's yard. Every day, while the adults went to work at construction sites in the city, we kids would hang around in stagnant puddles or play with sand for hours in the sun. Since Aunt Thanh taught us how to make Mid-Autumn lanterns, the boys had a new joy: searching for and picking up grapefruit seeds that people had thrown away.

Usually, grapefruit seeds were hard to find in the area where we lived, because almost every house had children the same age as me. They also made lamps. So we had to wander around the streets, many of us followed our mothers to the market to pick them up. I was always luckier than my friends when it came to picking grapefruit seeds to make lamps. Every late summer, my grandparents would come down from the Luong market to Vinh to visit their grandchildren, and the hometown gifts, in addition to sweet potatoes, peanuts, sticky rice, and beans, were also a dozen grapefruits picked from the home garden.

Every time I saw my cousin and my grandmother coming out of Vinh bus station with a string of pomelos around their necks that looked like a life buoy, I was extremely happy. Not only that, Aunt Thanh also often brought pomelos for my sisters and me after each time she visited home. I also had a place to “take advantage of”, which was that many factory workers were infatuated with Aunt Thanh and flattered my sisters and me to get her attention. Thanks to that, I always showed off to my friends because I had more pomelo bead bracelets than them.

Mid-Autumn Festival in the past. Photo: internet

The joy of Mid-Autumn Festival for city children is very simple. It is just a few Nu-ga candies and rose candies given as rewards by adults. Star lanterns are also made by ourselves from bamboo sticks collected from fences and pasted with old newspapers. Only grapefruit seed lanterns make us more excited. Each child prepares a thin bamboo (or wood) stick, about 50cm long, on which is tied a string of dried grapefruit seeds. Grapefruit seeds have a lot of essential oils, when burned they emit tiny sparks that are very attractive to children. There are also many children who are too eager to save any strings to burn on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival lantern procession. At times like that, Aunt Thanh always stands up to "intervene" and asks for a few strings. This makes the children always grateful and fond of Aunt Thanh.

Holding a string of brightly burning grapefruit beads, we walked through the poor streets of Vinh through many Mid-Autumn Festivals to the pounding sound of festival drums.

As time passed, Aunt Thanh also got married. Her husband was Uncle Nam, who was in the same unit and from the same hometown as his wife. I didn't see anything special about Uncle Nam compared to the other workers who had secretly loved and missed Aunt Thanh. I only heard adults talking to each other that it was all fate. Since Aunt Thanh got married, no one helped the children string pomelo beads to make lanterns anymore. Who would play that childish game anymore? Life kept changing, Aunt Thanh had to retire under the 176 regime. Uncle Nam also only stayed at the old agency for a short time before running away. And then the struggle to make a living still continues to this day.

Van Nhi