Daily life

While bằng lăng and phượng are summer flowers, cicada voice is the sound of summer here. Some people usually said cicadas are crying out there, some others told they are singing their happy songs. When I was a little girl, my friends and I usually looked for cicada shells, which were our favorite toys, and compared who found more. I did not know that there is a sad story about them, those cicadas which sing every summer.

A cicada shell - picture by Karen

In a rural area, there was a couple who worked as farmers. They were healthy and worked hard. Had been married for a long time, they still did not have any child. When they got old, the wife gave birth to their only child - a boy. They were very happy to see their wish become true.

Therefore, although they were poor and not healthy anymore that gave them a lot of difficulty to take care a little child, they felt as they were in their youth. They always smiled and kissed their son with love. Unfortunately, when their son was one year old, the father died. Life of the mother and her son became much more difficult. They were poorer and poorer. The mother had to go to everywhere even that was a forest or a high mountain to make ends meet. No matter where she had to go, near a far, she never came home late because she worried about her little son. One day, she was too exhausted that she got ill while they did not have anything left to eat. Looking at her little son, he was just too small to understand her hurt or helped her, she cried and tried to take her thin body into the forest to seek for some wild plant roots which were edible. She had to go very far, and finally she found a plant which could have many edible roots. She was too tired but thinking of her child made her feel strong and tried her best to dig them out. She had to dig deeply, created a big and deep hole. The ground was very dried and hard to dig. When she saw the roots, she was very happy to pick them up but suddenly she fell into the hole and never could get up.

The poor boy stayed at home, cried hard because he was too hungry and deeply missed his mother. Time went by, he still did not see his mother come back. He forgot his scare, tried going to the forest to find his mother. When he came to the hole his mother had dug, he saw his mother had turned into a dried dead body. Too hurt for his mother, he cried and called her name until he was in a dead faint. When he got up, he continued crying. The little boy got to thin and starve. He died and became a creature that cried nonstop in his whole life. People named the creature ve sầu(cicada).