Family Gatherings

As Chinese New Year is approaching and the festive feels gets stronger, I will be sharing more about my family gatherings. My extended family has always been close and we have a dinner gathering every Saturday evening. So family gatherings during weekends and holidays is a norm in my family.

I come from a single parent family but my extended family has always been close knitted. One of the main reasons are that all my cousin and I are around the same age with an age gap of 3-5 years so we do have many common topics to talk about. I remember when we were young, every Saturday when we meet up, we will update each one on our lives, play games like Pokémon or Yo-Gi-Oh and also to make fun of one another. Our parents would be talking about the problems faced in school and whether we are performing well or bad, also comparing our height and everything else. It was exciting, getting to meet constantly and have common topics.

However, over the years as my cousins and I transit into our 20s, we have gotten busier and less of us appear at the weekly Saturday dinner. My brother and I are one of the younger ones and we have noticed that the gatherings have slowly reduced to only our parent generation being present. Everyone has their own events for the weekends. For example, one of my cousin is a private tutor and has to teach during weekends, another has become a financial consultant and do meet clients on weekends. My other younger cousins have their various dating partners and also their friends as companions for the weekends.

I do miss out on the gatherings too when exams approach or when I meet up with my friends. This has gotten me thinking as I have talked about this with my mum and she said that maybe once their generation passes away, gatherings would be just reduced to CNY and festive period. This made me feel kinda sad as it is slowly whats happening right now. I guess as time passes, gatherings become so much more precious because everyone is much more focused on their careers and families.

Another thing that makes my mother's generation so closely knitted is due to them staying together since young. When they were young, my uncles, aunts, grand aunts and grand uncles with my grandparents all stayed in one landed property so definitely they have been seeing each other so often. I guess they too experienced what I am feeling right now as everyone started work and had their own HDB flats and family. It is so true when people say change is the only constant, we are all now working towards our goals and dreams and maybe when we have achieved what we aimed for, the time to start gathering and to catch up would come.

Nearing the festive period, let's all gather together and not take one another for granted. In the meantime, I would spend more time with my grandparents and mum. Looking forward to Chinese New Year and all the goodies!