Water Level

Rice paddies hold the sky upside down. Stand at the edge of any field in Bắc Ninh in May, when the seedlings are a centimeter high and the water is still, and you get two skies — one above you, one at your feet. The clouds move in both directions. My grandmother measured the year by water level. She'd stand at the edge of the paddy and look at her ankles and know what month it was, what needed doing, how many weeks until harvest. Her calendar was her body standing in water. I'm an accountant in Hanoi. I measure the year in quarters. Tax quarters. Fiscal quarters. My calendar is a spreadsheet. When I visit home, I stand at the paddy edge and the water tells me nothing except that my shoes are getting wet. But — the egrets are still here. White, angular, concentrating. They work the shallow margins where the dike meets the field and the water is warmest. My grandmother called them the tax collectors of the rice. They take a percentage. Nobody argues. The field is my uncle's now. He's sixty and bent in the back from decades of stooping. He walks the dikes every morning, checking the water level by the same method my grandmother used: himself, standing in it. I've offered to buy him a water gauge. Digital. Accurate. He looked at me the way my grandmother would have looked at me if I'd told her the sky was available as a spreadsheet. Some measurements need a body. The water rises. The rice grows. The egrets take their cut. My uncle's feet know what they need to know.