The lean seasons

(Baonghean) - I realized that the lean season was knocking on my door when I heard the sound of my grandmother's rice measuring spoon rubbing against the bottom of the earthenware jar in the small kitchen.

Every afternoon, she stood hunched over washing rice by the well, looking at the young rice fields with her deep, worried eyes. At the earliest, it would be a month and a half before the new harvest. The lean season had come, and the rice pot was filled with cassava. She choked up and said to her young grandchildren: “We’re almost out of rice, you kids have to endure a little. When I was as young as you, during the lean season, we didn’t even have cassava to eat…” Listening to her story, I suddenly remembered the famine of 1945, which the teacher had recreated in great detail in the History class a few days ago. Her life was miserable from the moment she was born until she was old, when she was almost eighty, she was still poor and miserable. Feeling sorry for her, after the meal, I told my younger brother not to beg or act spoiled by her.

Grandmother and grandchild. Illustration photo

Then the rice in the jar ran out, and she had to hurriedly carry a basket to the neighbor's house to borrow rice. Even though the rice in the jar was almost gone, without any hesitation, the neighbor still enthusiastically lent my grandmother several bowls of rice, and even gave her a piece of salted braised fish. For generations, the poor people in my hometown have always shared every piece of rice and piece of clothing with each other to overcome the difficult, struggling lean seasons.

At times like these, we can appreciate more the solidarity of the village and neighborly love in the proverb: "Sell distant brothers, buy close neighbors". In the following days, to save the little rice we had just borrowed, my grandmother and I had to eat pennywort porridge mixed with salt and peanuts, three parts rice, seven parts chopped pennywort. After swallowing the hot porridge, our throats were still bitter. My younger brother was not used to eating pennywort porridge, so he threw up and vomited. My grandmother felt so sorry for him that tears welled up in her eyes, she immediately put down her chopsticks, and hurriedly lit the stove to cook rice for him.

Lying next to her at night, I could clearly hear her sighing, sad and tired. For several nights in a row, she kept tossing and turning, unable to sleep. I knew that on days like this, she had hundreds of things to worry about. The creditors of the grocery stores in the market had also contacted her. She was getting thinner and thinner. The corners of her eyes were sunken. Her skin was yellow. The most valuable asset in the house at that time was a young calf that was not even two years old, and she had to sadly sell it.

I still remember that day, when the man in black leather boots quietly led the calf out of the gate, my brother and I ran after him, sobbing. The money from selling the calf was just enough to pay off the debt and buy another half a kilo of rice. During dinner, she gave her portion of white rice to her grandchildren, and ate boiled banana stem with fish sauce. She smiled and said: “I’m still full after eating rice at noon. Besides, I like eating banana stem more.” Suddenly, my chest ached and I choked up. I replied: “I also like eating banana stem more than eating rice. Look, there’s still so much white rice left.” She hugged her two little orphaned grandchildren, her eyes filled with tears…

Through those lean seasons, my siblings and I gradually grew up. Now that life is much more abundant than before, my grandmother has gone away forever. No more meals mixed with cassava. No more carrying baskets to neighbors to borrow bowls of rice to eat for the day. But at this very moment, even though I live in a time of “delicious food and beautiful clothes”, I still always feel hungry, hungry for human love! Sometimes, I secretly wish I could go back to those lean seasons of my childhood to live under the protection and care of my grandmother, to see that, back then, even though we lacked food and clothes, we never lacked love!

The lean seasons have been buried in my childhood memories, wistful, distant…

Phan Duc Loc

(Class B2 - D39, People's Police Academy, Co Nhue 2, Bac Tu Liem, Hanoi)