MY MOTHER AND MY PATERNAL HOMETOWN

 

THỦY NHƯ            

Dedicated to my beloved mother, who has devoted her entire life to her husband and children. 

I jumped off Ngọc’s bicycle, thanked him, and ran straight into the house. 

“Mom! Mom!” I was so excited, as if I had been away for years. 

My oldest sister came up from the kitchen and answered, “Mom isn’t home at this hour. You’ve only been gone to the village for one day, and you’re already acting silly. She’s out selling goods and won’t be back until tonight.” 

Then she suddenly exclaimed, “Goodness! Your shoes are filthy. How could you walk into the house like that? Go wash your feet at the well right now!”  I grumbled, “They’re not that dirty. I already washed them at the stream.” “Oh, come on, little princess. Go rinse your feet properly. I just cleaned the floor, and you’ve already dirtied it again.” 

I put down my basket and stepped back outside.

“Those are the cakes Aunt Tiến sent. Sister, check and see if they’re still okay.”  My little sister’s voice rang out from somewhere in the house.  “Did Auntie send bánh ít trắng *, sister? Give me one!”  My older sister answered sternly, “Take care of little Tí first. No one gets any cakes until Mom comes home.” 

At the well, I crouched down and picked sticky mud from the holes in the soles of my sandals. When I finally cleaned them, I noticed that my new sandals were badly scratched and nearly broken. 

Suddenly I felt a stinging sensation in my nose. 

I cried. 

That was the result of months of eager anticipation about visiting my father’s hometown.  Everything I had imagined in my ten-year-old mind was completely different from what I actually saw. 

There were no graceful bamboo groves bending along country roads as there were in my mom’s hometown. Instead, rusted black tanks stood ominously in the middle of the fields.  I did not see the famous lotus pond associated with the patriot Phan Châu Trinh. Instead, I saw the land scarred with deep bomb craters.  Nor did I find any trace of the grand houses I had heard so much about. All I saw were shabby thatched huts and patched tin roofs. 

Most disappointing of all, I did not see any proud, strong men among our relatives during the memorial gathering at Uncle Tiến’s house. There were only weakened women like my mother, struggling to raise children as innocent and helpless as my siblings and me. 

I found nothing to lean on, nothing to shelter beneath. 

I was utterly disappointed by the harsh reality of my father’s hometown. 

That evening, while helping Mother shell peanuts for the next day’s market, my thoughts poured out of me. Mother listened and there was silence. Then she gently began to reshape my understanding. 

I still remember her that night. 

She gazed out the doorway, her expression distant. Her eyes narrowed slightly, searching for reasons to explain the devastation of our ancestral village. Her voice was soft, so different from my earlier complaints and frustrations. “It was war, my child. Your maternal hometown was fortunate. It was never occupied, so the houses remained intact.” 

Though Mother did not say it outright, I understood who had occupied our village, and I began to understand why it looked so poor and ruined. 

Mother began telling us about Tây Lộc Village during its peaceful and prosperous days.  Through her words, I pictured my grandfather’s large brick house, with bamboo water pipes carrying water from Lộc Well into enormous giant clay jars.  I imagined a vast brick courtyard covered with rice drying beneath the March sun. I saw Bồ Lúa Field glowing gold in October, heavy with ripened rice. 

I saw herds of cattle grazing peacefully near Chà Vu Forest, where a small hut sheltered the dreams of a young man. 

Mother seemed eager to give us wings when she spoke of him.  His name was Mr. Toàn.  Each night, from his tiny hut in Chà Vu Forest, he would look toward the brightly lit town of Tam Kỳ and dream of living there someday. And eventually, he became a successful businessman in Saigon. 

My eyes widened as I listened. 

I was even more amazed when Mother told us that during the dry season, standing atop Đám Đồn Hill, one could see the white sea stretching across the horizon, appearing as high as the mountains themselves. 

Mother’s voice filled with pride as she spoke of Gentleman Phan Châu Trinh, the great patriot who came from our own village of Tây Lộc and became renowned throughout the country for his struggle for national independence. 

For the first time since my father and many of our relatives had been imprisoned **, I saw hope shining in Mother’s eyes. 

The following summer, Mother allowed me to visit my father’s hometown again. That year, the village lotus pond suddenly bloomed once more.  Everyone considered it a good omen and hoped it signaled change. Unlike my first visit, I arrived under the brilliant sunshine of a summer afternoon. 

I stood spellbound by the wild beauty of Ba Phan Stream. 

Perhaps it was the first time in my life that I saw a scene that seemed to come straight from the pages of a storybook.  The clear stream rushed noisily over uneven rocks, forming tiny waterfalls that were irresistibly charming.  Far upstream, small thatched houses nestled beneath towering green mountains. 

For a moment, I felt I was seeing the very images Mother had described. 

Yet my hometown was still poor—very poor. 

That year, Uncle Tiến had been released from prison, and his family’s home looked noticeably better. That gave me confidence that when my father finally returned, our family would once again enjoy full and satisfying meals. 

That summer, I stayed in the village for an entire week.  I tasted delicious stir-fried frog meat eaten with cassava flour crackers.  I lay in a rattan hammock at Aunt Lại’s house near Lộc Well, listening to birds chatter and cicadas sing loudly in the summer heat.  My cousins took me to gather wild dates.  

And I climbed Đám Đồn Hill.

I stood in awe before the beauty of Bồ Lúa Field. From the mountaintop, I looked down upon a vast landscape: the cool green of rice fields, the lighter green of newly planted bean patches standing out against brown earth, and rows of sweet potato mounds stretching into the distance.  Thin white threads of smoke drifted upward from homes hidden among trees at the foot of the mountain. 

I did not forget what Mother had told me. 

Following my cousin’s pointing finger, I gazed toward the horizon.  I could hardly believe my eyes.  The sea rose as high as the mountains, shimmering white and endless.  I could almost see great waves crashing against the shore.  There, from the summit of my father’s mountain homeland—a place I had always imagined as remote and windswept—I saw the ocean. 

Suddenly, I thought of the patriot Phan Châu Trinh. 

Perhaps long ago he too had stood upon this mountain, gazing toward the vast sea and dreaming. And one day, that patriot crossed distant oceans before returning to fight for the welfare and freedom of his people. I closed my eyes and silently made dreams of my own - impossible to come true. 

I am deeply grateful to God for giving me a mother who not only loved her children with all her heart, but who also gave us the gift of dreams. 

 The communist government took our father away from us.  During those bleak years my mother struggled tirelessly to provide for our family. And for seven dark years, through her stories about our ancestral homeland, she kept hope alive within us. 

Everything I have today grew from the seeds of hope Mother planted in me during those difficult years. 

I dream of returning one day to Tây Lộc, my father's village.  I will climb Đám Đồn Hill again and gaze toward the vast sea … and I will dream. 

I will dream that my father’s village will become prosperous once more.  I will dream that its people escape the image described by a friend of mine: “People whose hardship is etched deeply upon them, living nameless lives with heads forever bowed.”  I will dream that my hometown becomes wealthy and flourishing again—just as Tây Lộc appeared in my mother’s eyes so many years ago. 

 

Written in 1999 By Thuỷ Như in Vietnamese

Translated in 2026 (Thanks to the help from AI and my husband.)

 

* bánh ít trắng: Vietnamese mochi with sweet rice flour wrap around steamed mung bean  

** After the fall of the South of Vietnam in 1975, the Vietnam communist government imprisoned my father and most men in the South of Vietnam without any trials or judges. See here. My father was in prison for 7 years. 

Nguồn: Tác giả gửi, https://thuynhu.weebly.com/

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