Looking Back

by Phuong Tiet

6 year-old

It was the first day of my elementary school. I was wearing my uniform, and I nervous as I followed my grandfather to go to my class. I still remember how much I loved the uniform. It was a round neck shirt like a little lotus, my skirt was dark blue with some designs right in front of my belly like a bell. I changed that uniform a bunch of times before school started since my mom got it for me, but wearing it to school in the first day even made me unusually happy. My grandfather bought a lot of cute notebooks, a rule, pencils, erasers and a lovely water bottle for me.

My grandfather took me to the school and made recommendations carefully that

kind of made me embarrassed. He said things like “ don’t be shy to ask the teacher to

take you to the bathroom if you need to; don’t talk too much in class; respect to your

teacher; don’t fight with your classmates because your behavior will make your family is

proud of…”. The last thing he reminded me over and over was “after school, if

Grandfather haven’t come yet, do not go with any strangers or eat anything they give

you, they may be kidnappers. I kept bowing my head until it got dizzy from his

recommendations.

I took a deep breath and stepped to the classroom. Every kid was with their

parents, some were crying also. I looked around and tried to look for if there were any

kids who were with their grandparents instead of their parents like me. My parents are

both businesspeople, they don’t have a lot time with me. Most of the time, it’s my grandfather and nanny took care of me. My grandfather left me at my seat and left. It was

not too long until another kid came to sit next to me. I was still sitting quietly and

watching him. His mom stepped to the seat, took out a piece of tissue from her Channel

bag to wipe the table and the chair carefully before letting her son sit down. It was kind

of annoying, wondering if she noticed that it was a public school instead of a five- star

hotel with high quality- service. Even his notebook and eraser smelled so good that I

couldn’t take my eyes off of his stuff. I could smell strawberry favor of his eraser. I

wondered where he got those from so I could ask my mom to buy those for me.

Suddenly, my teacher hit the table to get out attention. All of my tedious thoughts

flew away. My teacher was such a beautiful angel in her long dress. Because in

Vietnamese culture, female teachers usually wear tradition long dress. It is a long dress

with pants, it is really tight to the body, so it can show the women’s beauty. The teacher

seemed to look so pretty in that dress, she wore the white one, it was exactly my favorite,

and the dress also got some flower designs along the hip part. We started to open the

notebook and learn how to write every single letter. My teacher carefully showed us how

to hold the pencils. It was just so awkward to us. My little fingers bent in and out to move

the pencil. I tried to change to left hand to write and got caught by my teacher. She did

not allow me to use left hand to write. Everyone had to be using the same right- hand

writing. I had to stay with her to practice my hand. What a conception our Vietnamese

made up!!!

Finally, it was time for math. I’m not like super into math, but I like it because I

think it’s easy. I obviously had no problem with it. After working hard since 7a.m, school

ended at 11h30. We all stood up to say goodbye to our teacher. All the kids flew outside.

The parents were there waiting for them. I stood in front of the school waiting for my

grandfather. Other kids left one by one with their parents. My grandfather appeared 15

minutes later and took me home.

7 year- old

I got hit by the teacher because I did not keep my notebook neatly and chatted in class.

8 year- old

The summer sunshine in Vietnam was killing me. It was really hot there. While

my parents did not know how and where to take us for that summer vacation, my cousin

said he was planning to go to visit his grandma in the countryside hometown. So we all

went there during the summer. It was the first time I visited the countryside, and it was

the funniest vacation we spent together. We had a chance to see huge fields where a stock

can take along flight, small lakes that some villagers still went fishing there.

We kids were well prepared for that long trip, we bought a lot of fireworks, games

and even catapults to go hunt birds. Another important thing we packed were snacks.

That was the longest night when I could not sleep, the night before we took the trip. I was

over excited for it. I was scared if day would come. It was silly thought I had as a kid.

We departed at the very early of the morning. The street was still very quiet when

we left. We all were tired of a long trip on the car. Our butts were too ached to walk or sit. I wondered why we were still not there yet. It took us about 10 hours to arrive at my cousin’s hometown. His grandma was waiting for us at the village gate, waving in happiness at her grandson and us. The scene was just so Vietnamese. Birds, rice fields, rows of bamboos, and coconuts which all were swaying lightly in the wind, and orchards were everywhere, farther is the Vietnamese longest mountain- Truong Son, and a mysterious blue beach when grandma warmed us to never go there since a lot of kids died there while they were swimming.

As soon as we put down our pack bags, tiredness had gone away, and we ran to the back yard. My cousin climbed all the way to the top of a coconut tree and got some braches of big long coconut leaves. My cousin seemed to be very familiar to it, he got along really well and even sharpened fake swords for us from those big long coconut leaves for each of us. After getting enough “ weapons”, we did rock paper scissors to pick the team for the game, we ran to the sand hill to play. As the sky got darker, we felt tired and hungry, so we went home for dinner. My aunt and her mother- in law( my cousin’s grandma) prepared for us a big meal with perfect, healthy and organic traditional dishes. I love Vietnamese cuisine which is really healthy, we eat a lot of salad and vegetable with most of dishes.

The next morning, grandma decided to kill a chicken that she had been raising for us. As soon as we opened the coo, the chicken seemed to know it was going to be our meal, and suddenly it started “ screaming”, the chicken jumped out and ran around. Grandma ran after the chicken, and tried to catch it. My cousin saw grandma was running, he ran after her to help her too. Later were my aunt, my uncle, and all of the kids tried to help, everyone kept running around to catch the chicken. It was the funniest thing we have done in our life. It was like we were playing roles in a comedy.

At noon, we went to the small lake right in front of the village gate. My cousin took a step and jumped to the lake. After a few second pondering, we all jumped in and joined my cousin. We brought a fishnet hoping we would get some fishes for dinner. We played in the water for hours. When it was getting dark, we checked the fishnet. That was awesome because we did got some fishes for our first fishing even they were still small. Happily, all of us went home and made fried fish. The fishes were so small that they did not have a lot of flesh, their bones were even more than their flesh. I had never eaten any fish that was tasty than those, probably because we fished them by ourselves.

That night, I told my aunt to wake me up to go to the market with her. I had never gone to a countryside market and I was very curious to see how it looked like. However, I woke up after the crow. I checked the clock, and it was 7am. I could not find where my aunt was. A haft of hour later, she got home with groceries on her hands. I was kind of shocked because it was still very early for shopping. She said she went there around 5am. Since the market opened at that time and closed around 8am, if we went late, there would not be any good food left. I could not believe that everyone in the village has to get up that early to go to market. Actually, people who live in countryside usually go to bed very early and get up very early too.

The next day, we decided to hang out in the rice fields. Because the rice crop was just done, there was no rice trees anymore. The fields were empty plains, all that was left was mud. There was not really a reason why we got there and started walking on that mud field. I could feel that sticky mud under my feet, its smell also, but we still played around like we did not care whether we got dirt. Whenever I took a step on the mud, my feet sunk with my toes outstretched and the mud came through the holes of each toes. It was gross but we were curious since this was very new to us.

We got home in mud. My aunt was shocked when she saw all of us with stinky mud. She complained if we were crazy, and asked us to take shower carefully as soon as we can. Even though she nagged us, she could not control herself from laughing. We looked really funny that time like we never knew what mud was. Some villagers saw us and could not hold their laugh too, we were such weirdo in their eyes.

The last day in my cousin’s hometown, we went to the sand hill behind our house again. On that hill, I lost my shoes, and I just realized that when we were almost about to leave. I could not find my shoes even though all of my cousin helped me. Besides, there was no store or mall around the village, so I couldn’t buy another one. On the way home, we stopped at a city to spend a night before continuing the trip. I was very embarrassed to walk barefoot to a hotel. Everyone looked at me as a crazy girl. As soon as we got our rooms, my aunt took me to a nearest shop to buy another pair of shoes. I did not care about styles any more, just as long as I had a pair of shoes to wear, was good enough for me though.

We went to eat like starved kids after a long trip in the car. When we got back to our hotel room to rest. While we were walking pass on the hall way, the door of the room next to our room happened to open, we curiously look at inside and they were all altars of dead people. I could see there were their black and white pictures with red light as small as a grape tomato, a typical altar in my country. My face was pale. We all screamed in fear and ran to our room. As soon as we all got in to the room, my cousin locked the door, jumped onto the bed, and covered our bodies with blankets. Then it started getting hotter and hotter. We were not even brave enough to turn off the light. Later we fell asleep. The next morning, we packed our belongings and went home. Everyone was still scary. We told the elders but they did not believe or they just did not mind. My aunt said we kids had been watching too much movies.

This was the funniest and unforgettable vacation of my life. Whenever I think about this vacation, I feel homesick. Vietnamese countryside always makes me feel so comfortable and peaceful like I can be back to my own soul wherever I belong.