Portrait Writing

 

MOTHER

Mother was a hard working woman. Growing up without the presence of parents forged her into someone mentally strong from a very young age. She never received any formal education in her life. The only lessons she ever learned came from experience, especially from farming and planting rice.

She was highly skilled in cultivating rice. Every morning after dawn prayer, she would leave the house carrying a woven rattan basket on her back. Inside it were an old rusted hoe and a reused drinking bottle whose age no one could remember anymore, its appearance already blending in with the soil itself.

I will always remember her darkened hands, thin and marked by veins, and the varicose lines that appeared on her legs and arms from walking long distances and working tirelessly. She was very adept at selecting rice seeds ready for planting, separating them little by little under the morning sun. Often she worked on an empty stomach because there was no food left at home. Her worn appearance was visible in her clothes: sleeves torn and yellowed, long pants riddled with holes, and bare feet that never touched sandals. Cracks on her soles had turned black from constant contact with earth and mud.

I remember the way she wiped sweat from her face while squatting, planting rice one stalk at a time. The way she stepped backward and occasionally stood up to ease the intense pain in her body. Her face was wrinkled, yet always gentle with a smile. She never showed sadness, though exhaustion was clearly carved into her beautiful features.

At midday, she would cook rice harvested from the previous year. Farmers in the village never sold their rice, they stored it to eat daily until the next harvest arrived. Slowly, she poured a small amount of rice into a container and washed it in the clear river water beside the vast rice fields. She rinsed it several times before placing it onto a stone stove fueled by a large fire made from wood collected near the forest.

Do not ask where Mother found side dishes. Sometimes she wandered through the rice paddies searching for snails. Other times, she picked vegetables she had previously planted along the embankments, whether long beans or cassava leaves. Usually, she cooked these vegetables together with the rice, but only after the rice had begun to boil. That was her daily meal. She never knew chicken or meat of any kind. What she knew were eggplants, long beans, and whatever vegetables she could grow along the rice field borders.