“There used to be a time, not so long ago, when the day of Sunday for our entire family would be spent in the main house and compound where my parents live. Those who resided within the city perimeter would arrive around lunch with their pot luck specials and assemble a worthy food presentation that would only be visible for about fifteen minutes before it was totally wiped out by our festal swarm. As always, the occasion would also double up as an informal time for everyone to know how each had fared, including news from the first-born and latest antics by the great-great (now add another great) grandchildren. All this passed out normally, like dessert.”
Thus, I wrote of this happy tradition more than three years ago and alas, much has drastically changed. For starters, the coming of Covid and the lockdown and quarantine that ensued have all but killed that festive bolt-in family affair. In a sense, it had likewise felt like a kind of moving out. Sure, many vehemently insist that technology has greatly helped to ease some of our anxieties, but the question remains, has technology already developed an application that could simulate the common indescribable feel one might get from a simple familial hug? Still nothing like it in the world, and you can try to prove me wrong.
Last week, my late brother’s apo by his only son gave birth to a baby boy. A few months before, her younger sibling and his partner had also added their most pretty-ful baby girl to our family registry. One might imagine, had these two events happened during the older time before covid, what Sunday celebrations could we have had?
In the past, I have likewise written about how my late mom had referred to our compound as a happy place (sorry Mcdo, you might have heard it first from her). All because of the continuous run of babies who have through the years all passed through its red gates and moved on to eventually add their own families to the clan. As it stands by my own genealogical count, my parents have at present, twenty grandchildren, nineteen grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Covid or not, the compound has kept up with mom’s happy tag even though she had long left us.
Nothing at all to be sad about really, from my parents’ eyes, then to ours their remaining children, the coming of their grandchildren, great and great-great grandies into the hall of the old grand house is but a little part of the plan that life does indeed goes on. In fifteen years, my apo’s baby Max would be strutting around in his teen frame and flexing at the world. In another ten, who knows, he might be moving on to have his little Maxes too, much like his cousins from the compound.
Who knows indeed, tomorrow is a long time and I might not even be here to meet his young girlfriend as he timidly brings her into the red gates to meet the clan during our traditional Sunday lunch.
