There are normally different ways for a Tet of workers. It is simple to unmarried guys like me. For those who are unable to come home and having night shifts, it is simple to gather together a round a hot pot.
So this is an end-of-the-year event. Living in rented houses and getting used to a temporary life, there is no need to buy things for Tet. It is just like any other day. No flowers. There is only a banh chung bought a couple of days before in the market. Its sticky rice cover has turned hard and dry. There is some sweet things- a gift from the company. They are so cheap that they cannot be sent home as gift. So they are kept to be nibbled over days of Tet. Those who have families are busy with cleaning-up and home decoration. They try to buy some clothes to their kids no matter how poor they are. And having enough food for days of Tet. Some lavishly buy a branch of cherry blossoms; some simply spend hundreds of dong on pots of kumquat. Decoration lights flashing; music playing all dad. Others returning home for Tet; their dog being sent to a neighbor’s. Tet of workers is like that: some places noisy; some places. Only the feeling of nostalgia: it is unable to send it home...
I love days of sunny chilling spring days. There is nothing to do if return home after work. I wander around flower markets in town. So just wandering to share others’ joyful atmosphere. A man is buying flowers with his old mother: he shielding his mother in the crowd; he patiently waiting for her to make a choice of flowers. Finally, they decide to bring home a pot of four-season ochna. A happy smile shines the mother’s face. And that is Tet for me. Enough. In another corner of the market. Another mother sitting next to a boy, coughing hard. The little boy crouches in his turtleneck sweater. The boy sitting, nibbling his sugar-coated donut and giving a smile to anyone who stops to look at his flowers... Flowers of yellow chrysanthemums and blooming red poinsettia smiling with passers-by. I do not intend to buy anything at first but then end up buying a pot of barren poinsettias. Do I need some flowers or do I need the smile of the boy’s, who is perhaps the same age as my nephews. Suddenly, I find myself not having come home for Tet for the past three years.
Working shifts in the New Year’s Eve, we have to take turn calling home. During a call, I can feel, the smell of burning incense, the smell of young sugar canes from both sides of the altar for good fortune, and I can hear my mother’s voice trembling in a dew-clad cold night the voice of my nephews’ asking for red envelops, the voice of women’s in my family who are preparing for the meal. If I can return home tomorrow, Tet is already over. The real atmosphere of Tet is from the 23rd to the New Year’s Eve only: busy with making banh chung, making pickles and preparing for Tet. Then in days after, the atmosphere is fading and fading, even in warm wishes. After calling home, there is a party for the New Year’s Eve. Some nuts, some banh chung and meat. We are raising glasses of beer for a toast to the New Year. At the room corner, some buds of flowers on the the tree of cherry blossoms have bloomed - as small brilliant flames that warms the hearts of homesick guys...
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