Awakening the spring

(Baonghean) - Mom, I won't be coming home for Tet this year. I still have to visit dozens of bosses and department heads who are about to retire. So many people are eyeing that position now, it would be foolish not to act quickly. Okay, Mom?

- I'll probably be home late, Dad. You all go ahead and have your New Year's Eve dinner. I still have to go to a class reunion. Some friends who went abroad are coming back, and if I don't see them now, when will I ever get the chance?

- We'll come back next year, bringing our son to visit you both, because my wife is hesitant to travel this far. I promise you, Mom and Dad, we'll definitely come back next year!

This year we promised to come back next year, but the following year we hesitated and postponed it again until the year after that.

I don't know when exactly the Lunar New Year reunion became a responsibility, a duty we had to fulfill for our loved ones. We indifferently thought that family members were the most selfless and forgiving people, so if faced with countless other concerns, we readily made them wait while we pursued our own fame, fortune, or pleasures, only to return home when we were utterly disillusioned. Ten years, then twenty years, and then, as we reach the end of our lives, we suddenly realize how many precious and lovely springs we have let slip away. Our grandparents, parents, and siblings wait patiently for us to gather for a reunion meal. Will they wait forever, or will they, too, be swept away by the vicissitudes of life, birth, aging, sickness, and death, or by the twists and turns of circumstances, leaving us to see spring wither and barren? If life is the ocean and we are the sails, then our loved ones are the lighthouses guiding our ship to the shore where we can anchor. Yet, how many people in life know how to be content with the shore or determine when it's time to return? Instead, they are constantly chasing after fleeting fame and fortune, things as ephemeral as seashells on the sand. At some point, when we are lost amidst the vast ocean, when the lighthouses' light has vanished into the mist, we realize that life is short, yet we failed to cherish and appreciate it, letting it slip away in waste and loneliness.

My boat has sailed far out to sea for countless seasons of swallows soaring, perhaps because I've absorbed the salty, bitter taste of the sea and foreign lands, and spring within me died long ago. Or perhaps my eyes are dim, preventing me from seeing the vibrant green shoots, or my ears are deaf, so I listen but never hear spring return? Am I old, or is spring old? Or is it that the very moment I set sail, far from my homeland, family, and friends, was also the moment the budding spring flower within me withered and faded? Suddenly, I intensely remember that afternoon of the 30th of Tet, my eyes welling up and my nose stinging, as if I can still smell the fragrant incense my grandfather lit on that drizzling afternoon. Where can I find those days now? My soul is like a slumbering apricot blossom in the dark garden; who will awaken it?

My old friends, who grew up together, all loved playing with firecrackers, eating sticky rice cakes, and receiving lucky money during Tet. Now, we've all gone our separate ways. Do we still share the same innocent memories and a touch of reverence for those springs of the past? Or is everyone preoccupied with friends, bosses, and envelopes of money during Tet, so preoccupied with simple, fragrant family meals and traditional pastimes? Thinking about this, I silently weep, weeping not only for myself, a stranger in a foreign land, but also for those fortunate enough to be with their loved ones, yet failing to cherish the fragile, fleeting moments of spring. When will those people finally awaken to the spirit of spring?

Hai Trieu (Email from Paris)