Family Gathering

      

       My eldest cousin brother has a son who has just reached the age of one-year-old three weeks before. Due to the Hari Raya holiday, my cousin brother decided to have a birthday party for his son and at the same time having a family gathering. Well, I couldn’t really remember when our last family gathering was. It seemed like it was on the night before the first day of Chinese New Year. So, I was very happy as I couldn’t wait any longer to meet my uncles and their families.

       Everyone came back from different places and gathered at my uncle’s house where the gathering was held. As usual, each family will prepare some dishes and we would have a ‘feast’ (I called it a ‘feast’ because there would be really a lot of food to eat!). My mother had been busy since the afternoon to cook the dishes so that we would able to be there by 7pm when the gathering started. My mother cooked a few dishes like fried noodles, chicken curry and stir-fried vegetables. Meanwhile, my sister and I went to buy a present for the birthday kid. We spent quite some time before making up our mind to buy a shirt and a pants for him. The moment we reached home, we went to help in the kitchen.

       Everybody was there by 7pm. My uncle’s house was full of noise and laughter again. There were already a lot of mouth-watering dishes on the dining table. There were fried chicken balls, sausages, fried chicken, salad, my aunt’s favourite dish--mutton curry and sweet sour fish. Oh My God! It has been long since the last time I saw so many dishes in front of me! It sounded like it has been more than a decade I didn’t eat anything. But really, I was extremely excited due to all the home cooked dishes there. In fact, I am quite ashamed of myself to say that even though I just came back from home to the campus a week ago, I had already started to miss those dishes cooked by my mother!

      We were chatting and watching television programs while eating. I was too glad to meet my younger cousin sisters who came from Seremban. After the dinner, the birthday kid just woke up in time. Then, my elder cousin brother brought the cake to the dining table. We started to sing the birthday song for him and he was taught to blow the candle. Although he is just one years old, he looked very happy too when his mother held his tiny hand to cut the cake. As my mother told me before, when I was one years old, I was very blur and couldn’t figure out what was going on around me. Kids nowadays are indeed getting smarter and smarter! Then, we presented him the presents that we bought. Having a round face, slightly slanted eyes, a tiny nose and mouth, he looks so cute and adorable that everyone just likes to hold him in arm and play with him. The party end at 11pm and we went back after the cleaning job was done.     

       It was really a nice family gathering as we were kept up-to-date about everyone’s recent life and therefore strengthened the family bond. After the holiday, we will be busy with our own daily life and will not have this kind of gathering too often. I am quite satisfied that I had this family gathering during the holiday.