One rainy night, I returned home on a technology motorbike taxi after a drunken party. The late rain was cold. The raindrops fell sideways, lashing my numb face. The yellow light cast a dark and hazy darkness on the rain curtain. The front kept appearing and disappearing in the water, sometimes clear, sometimes blurry. The young driver suggested that we pull over to the porch for quick shelter.
The young man spoke with a thick Central accent. When he moved to Saigon to study, he also had to take on many part-time jobs, and finally chose to work as a motorbike taxi driver to make time for his studies. On a free day, he earned four to five hundred thousand. On a slow day, he earned about two hundred. The city was not easy to live in, so he clung to studying here in the hope of changing his life in the future, to help his parents in the countryside. Ahead of each wheel turn was the future, the countryside, and home, so we had to be safe for ourselves and for our customers. The rain still beat steadily on the corrugated iron roof where we were sheltering. It didn’t matter, because as the young driver said, we still had a future ahead.
But not everyone can see the road home ahead of each turn of their vehicle. Sometimes when we read information on newspapers, social networking sites, we still hear traffic accident statistics after a holiday, or during Tet when people are on the road to go home for Tet. The numbers also make the joy fade away. The haste in a corner, the encroachment in the clutches of the accelerator. Everyone wants to be fast, no one wants to slow down in the middle of the traffic. Everyone competes for a quick destination. That is when we slow down our whole life.
Or we keep the habit of "going all out" at the drinking table, forcing people to drink, abstaining and even showing off our "bravery" while drinking, only to end up staggering drunk on the way home. Alcohol always brings a not-so-light stimulation to the cars speeding on the road. In early June, a tragic accident in Bac Giang caused by a car driver with an alcohol concentration 1.5 times higher than the permitted level caused a shocking social event. It was the heartbreak and terrible consequences that rang the alarm bell to control speed. Also on the way home, but in front of that rolling car were people who could never go home.
On every road of the country, every day there are millions of vehicles rolling, there are millions of people driving to go and come back, in the end there is still a consciousness for the front of those vehicles. If we know that there is still a roof with the arms of parents waiting, with the love of husband and wife, with the anticipation of children, with many things worth us being careful, restrained and living on, then surely the vehicles rolling will always be in a safe mindset to go home.
My commute is about 20km. Early in the morning, my mother always goes to the gate to wait for me to disappear at the end of the alley before turning back to close the door. On the days when I come home late, my mother is always awake waiting. The light on her porch is on, she lies in the hammock swinging, her hand always holding the phone. She knows the sound of my car by heart. I only need to stop at the gate to hear the jingle of her key in the gate. My mother always waits like that even though for more than 20 years her child has known how to drive and has been struggling to make a living. For her, when her child returns home after a day of wandering around the streets, that is peace. And I believe that every mother in the world waits for her child to return home with the same feeling.
So, as I drive, I always think of home and mother. Because I know, love is in the heart, but peace is on the steering wheel. As I drive across our country, I think there is always a home and someone waiting ahead. It is just that we see this sooner or later!
Article: Tong Phuoc Bao
Illustration: Document
