The lake's surface is bustling with conversation.

(Baonghean) - Every time I turn from Nguyen Thi Minh Khai street to Le Loi street, I can't help but feel nostalgic and moved. Suddenly, I feel a surge of nostalgia for my mother. It seems that somewhere hidden in the noisy street corner is the figure of a mother pedaling her bicycle with only a sharp iron stub on one side. Sitting behind the bicycle is a 7-year-old boy with curly hair that reaches down to his shoulders. The mother parks the bicycle on the sidewalk and leads her son through the rows of trees to the floating house on Thuy Ta Lake.

A corner of Thuy Ta Lake (Vinh City) now.

There was the best ice cream in town. No! For the boy, it was the best in the world. With several missing baby teeth, the boy did not dare bite hard into the cold ice cream, he just slowly sucked it. Oh, the aroma, the sweetness. The boy closed his eyes for fear that the wonderful sweetness would disappear. Meanwhile, the mother sat leaning on the chair, one hand wiping her sweat, the other waving her conical hat towards her child. Occasionally, the two of them would look at each other with bright smiles.

So it has been 30 years since that summer. The kind mother of that year has now passed away. The boy from that time is now the pillar of a small family with a wife and children. Time flies, the street corner with the floating shop on Thuy Ta Lake has also changed. But surely in the memories of many Vinh people, there is still a place that holds the summer afternoons of their childhood.

I don’t know when Thuy Ta Lake in Vinh City came into existence, I only know that when I grew up I saw that clear blue lake. There was a time when I thought that Thuy Ta Lake was formed by a series of bombs dropped on the city during the years when the whole North struggled to resist the escalating bombardments of the American empire. Despite doubts about the formation of a lake in the center of the city, our generation only knew that Thuy Ta Lake was one of the top destinations and “scenic spots” of Vinh in the years after 1975. On this very lake, people built a floating restaurant to serve the thirst of the people.

At that time, in my memory, that street was very beautiful. Thuy Ta Lake was located right at the right angle of the curve from Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street to Le Loi Street. On the other side of Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street, there was Cua Bac Green Park, which we children often called the “fountain” garden because there were cool green bushes and a water fountain system in the middle of the rockery. Opposite Thuy Ta Lake to the West, also along Le Loi Street, was the city's bus station.

The place was always crowded and noisy with people from all over the country lining up to buy tickets to go to the North and South. Only Thuy Ta Lake, where there were floating houses, was the most interesting. There was a state-run trading store to serve people's thirst. During those years, when the subsidy regime was still in daily life, people still had to queue up to buy food and use coupons, but at Cua Bac trading store on Thuy Ta Lake, people could buy ice cream and soft drinks with cash.

In the shop painted in sky blue, stretching out into the middle of the lake, saleswomen with aprons on their chests ran back and forth, carrying back and forth. On the tray were steaming ice cream sticks, attracting greedy eyes. In the space of the house, there was the innocent laughter of children, occasionally mixed with the sound of Honda motorbikes carrying couples parked by the lake. The young men had shoulder-length hair, their faces were all sunken in, making them look a bit long. The girls were shy in their floral dresses made of V-de-lin fabric, their hair was curled into curls that we used to call “phi-goat” hair at that time. They were “playboys” of the “upper class” at that time. However, Thuy Ta Lake was still an interesting and attractive destination that no one could ignore.

Thuy Ta Lake is being renovated to create a landscape for a luxury apartment building.

At this time, people are building a luxury apartment building at Thuy Ta Lake. The sidewalk on Le Loi Street next to the lake is renovated with marble and planted with tall cajuput trees. In the middle of the lake, people also built a fountain. All of this is to create a landscape for the apartment building in a prime location of the city. No one knows what the project will actually look like, but it certainly won't be as popular as it was years ago. Time passes, and the children born after the war have grown up.

The once famous Thuy Ta Lake is now just a small lake surrounded by countless polluted wastes from residential areas in the area. The shops have long since disappeared. Instead, houses and shops have sprung up densely. On the sidewalk of Le Loi Street, next to Thuy Ta Lake, is where passersby wait for buses and coaches, where motorbike taxi drivers take shelter, and where some shops selling breakfast and late-night food make a living. Sometimes, that sidewalk is also bustling with freelance workers gathering to gamble with cards or chess. When people start to get used to those troublesome and chaotic images, they gradually forget Thuy Ta Lake, and the younger generation is even less aware of this once famous entertainment spot.

I have gone through so many scorching summers, I cannot remember all the delicious and strange things I have enjoyed from the North - Central - South. Among them are ice creams that cost as much as a hundred thousand rice. However, somehow, no flavor can compare to the ice cream of 30 years ago. And every time I return to that street corner, I seem to see my mother's affectionate eyes, feel the cool breeze from the hat in her hand caressing my childhood years.

Dao Tuan