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Winter has arrived

This year’s winter has returned with the wind brushing over the old rooftop. I stand under the porch, watching the kitchen smoke blend into the mist, and suddenly my heart falls still, as if someone had softly whispered, “Winter is here!”

In the old days, whenever winter came, the children in the village chirped like little birds. The biting cold never stopped us. We played hide-and-seek around the haystacks by the road; whoever slipped inside first would be the warmest kid in the world. Some even fell asleep in there, only to be pulled out by their mothers—hair tangled with smoke, faces smudged with ash, yet grinning from ear to ear.

When the afternoon came, we would run out to the fields again. We scooped water to make it splash “co co,” smoked out mice, caught grasshoppers, and sometimes found a few sweet potatoes to bury in the burning hay. When the potatoes were done—skin charred black, smoke stinging our eyes—their fragrance mixed with our bright laughter. We had no candy or cakes, but nothing could ever match that kind of sweetness.

As for me, I still remember the sight of my mother returning from the market at noon. Her bamboo shoulder pole creaked softly, carrying baskets filled sometimes with rice crackers, sometimes a few sticks of sugarcane. The moment she set the baskets down, I would rush over, my eyes glowing like fireflies. And somehow, just the faint scent of toasted rice crackers drifting from the kitchen was enough to make winter feel strangely warm.

Now, the old haystacks are gone. The village fields have turned into smooth concrete roads and rows of tall buildings. Children today don’t know what “đổ cồ cộ” is, and the smell of burning hay—the smell that once made my eyes sting but warmed my childhood—is no longer rising into the evening sky.

Winter has arrived… But the winter of my childhood—the winter filled with laughter, the scent of hay, the smell of roasted grasshoppers, and the silhouette of my mother carrying baskets home from the market—has truly gone far away.