Family gatherings brings us together

Based on the novel “The Particular Sadness of Lemoncake”, there have been many scenes where we see Rose and her family gather together and have dinner. One of those scenes can be seen in page 43 of chapter 8 where Rose and her family seem to have a ritual during dinner time where they talk about themselves while eating. In my opinion, I find this tradition rather appalling and it seems like something I would like to do with my family most of the time when we’re together. This is because this ritual helps us bond with each other and everyone gets to share their stories and tell their problems to one another. 

In this task, we were assigned to recall any childhood memory about eating traditions/ food in my family. We have to go back to a few years back where in my opinion, it was a memory I’ll truly cherish. This was a time during Hari Raya. Usually during Hari Raya, me and my family members would go back to our hometown which is in Kota Bharu, Kelantan. Usually, we would firstly perform our prayers at the nearby mosque near my grandparents house. Later after that, me and my other family members would go to my granduncle’s house which was only a walking distance from the mosque. Every year, they would always invite us over to have breakfast with them right after our prayers and it would soon become an annual tradition. Yes, we have this tradition once every year but there was this one time which made it more significant and something I’ll never forget. 

I think I was about 15 years of age, and back then most of my distant cousins came back to my hometown as well to celebrate raya. Now know that when I say distant cousins I mean we know each other but we rarely hang out or even know a lot about ourselves because we hardly ever see each other. We usually only come around together when there’s a special holiday or when one of our families would invite us over to their place. That year all of us gathered together at my granduncle’s house for breakfast. I was deeply craving my grandmother’s cooking cause she makes one of my most favourite dishes and in my opinion no one can top her cooking. After I got my food, I remember my mom asking me to go over to my other cousins to eat with them and hang out with one another. I was pretty shy as as you can tell we aren’t really that close so I didn’t really know what to say. It was pretty much like ice breaking but one of my cousins decided and said “Hey, lets all put our phones away and have a nice conversation without using our phones just for dinner tonight”. In my opinion, it was an amazing idea because me and my cousins got to interact with one another and got to share different stories about each other since we didn’t know much about the other person. We shared laughs and one of the things I loved the most and remembered was when there was a point where each of us would just come over with different jokes and it was just simple and silly ones but we all still had a laugh and we were just enjoying each others company. At the end of the night, none of us were willing to pick up and check on our phones because we were enjoying each other’s company. We ended up spending the rest of the day together after that but I would definitely remember that meal as it was the when me and my cousins got to know each other better and start reconnecting again as we don’t see each other often.

What I love about this is that people in my generation are able to still do this and reconnect with one another, have funny stories to tell each other and just enjoy each other’s company. It’s something really special to just communicate and talk and share each other’s experiences cause that’s what we’ll remember in the future. Till this day, I really cherish this moment and it’ll be one of my favourite childhood memories. This is because nowadays kids are always on their phones and always distracted with what new video game came up on the apple store and on social events like this most of them would be anti-social and be on their phones. This should’t be what our future generation should look like as there is so much more to the world than just being restricted behind an electronic device.