When I was younger, I used to dread the long 3 hour car rides back to Malacca because of the inconvenience. During my awkward adolescent years, I gradually distanced myself from my cousins because I hardly saw them and there seemed to be no common topics to start a conversation (of course my lack of mastery of Hokkien was also a deterring factor). Over the years I learnt to become more social, and we started to talk more and share about our lives. They would bring me around Malacca to hunt for good Satay Celup, we would go crazy at the playground near to our grandma's house, we would sit and watch my younger cousins chase each other around the compound on bicycles to compare whose skills are the best.
It made me come to realize how much I treasure such kinship. My dad's family has 6 children who are scattered all over Malaysia (and in our case, Singapore) in view of better job opportunities. We only get together once a year over CNY. It's such a happy, warm feeling, to see such a big family getting together to lou hei, to watch the younger kids running around and mingling with each other, and to talk to people whom I've known all my life yet hardly meet. We would reminisce about the earlier days when ah ma's courtyard had many many chickens and we would compete to feed them with corn, the days when the kampong nearby was still a kampong and our dads would bring us on a tour of the neighborhood, when we used to pretend play and jump on the beds and play hide&seek even though there was nowhere to hide. It's something that I used to take for granted. But I realize that as we grow older, and become more entangled in the woes of our adult lives, these opportunities will be harder to come by.
Someone told me that these get-togethers will eventually cease once our grandparents are no longer around. I don't believe that family relationships are so fragile, that the ties that bind would be so easily cleaved. Because as one ages, I think that companionship and kinship will be all the more precious.
So, this Lunar New Year is over. We're back in Singapore, ready to prepare for yet another busy year.
May we have many more happy and lively Chinese New Years to come (:
