I remember waking up to the sound of happiness...laughter.
It was the beginning of the Winter Vacations!!! The weather was behaving and had turned nippy in the early mornings and evenings with the sunny days short and hot. The extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins had arrived. There was excitement and anticipation in the air. The men were chatting over endless cups of tea, the women were happily obliging and the kids were unexpectedly getting along without supervision! It was the most awaited time of the year...the run up to Christmas!
I was the sixth of eight cousins, a very nicely balanced bunch of four girls and four boys and we had a ball growing up. This was when the school year ended when the calendar year ended and we had a whole month off from school and looked forward to starting the new year in a new class.
But this is about the Christmas holidays. The only time of the year when everybody seemed to give up their petty fights and trying to prove who's right and who's been wronged and all the rest of the shananigans that go hand in hand with big family gatherings and joined in to celebrate. This is about how everyone planned together about how much cake was enough and how much dry fruit needed to be bought and washed and sun dried and chopped and cleaned. About the new outfits and matching accessories. Just the preparations for Christmas will take another entire blog post!!! But all of this had a singular underlying emotion - happiness...laughter.
I loved waking up everyday...but there was something so magical about those winter mornings when I shuffled out of bed from under my cozy covers and always waited a bit behind my bedroom door in the dark, listening to the grown ups chit chat at the dining table, loving the smiles I could hear in their voices without seeing their faces yet, soaking in the warmth of a family gathered in the morning gossiping, joking, laughing...happy.
That's how I remember my childhood...that's how I choose to remember it. My very own "wonder years".
It was the beginning of the Winter Vacations!!! The weather was behaving and had turned nippy in the early mornings and evenings with the sunny days short and hot. The extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins had arrived. There was excitement and anticipation in the air. The men were chatting over endless cups of tea, the women were happily obliging and the kids were unexpectedly getting along without supervision! It was the most awaited time of the year...the run up to Christmas!
I was the sixth of eight cousins, a very nicely balanced bunch of four girls and four boys and we had a ball growing up. This was when the school year ended when the calendar year ended and we had a whole month off from school and looked forward to starting the new year in a new class.
But this is about the Christmas holidays. The only time of the year when everybody seemed to give up their petty fights and trying to prove who's right and who's been wronged and all the rest of the shananigans that go hand in hand with big family gatherings and joined in to celebrate. This is about how everyone planned together about how much cake was enough and how much dry fruit needed to be bought and washed and sun dried and chopped and cleaned. About the new outfits and matching accessories. Just the preparations for Christmas will take another entire blog post!!! But all of this had a singular underlying emotion - happiness...laughter.
I loved waking up everyday...but there was something so magical about those winter mornings when I shuffled out of bed from under my cozy covers and always waited a bit behind my bedroom door in the dark, listening to the grown ups chit chat at the dining table, loving the smiles I could hear in their voices without seeing their faces yet, soaking in the warmth of a family gathered in the morning gossiping, joking, laughing...happy.
That's how I remember my childhood...that's how I choose to remember it. My very own "wonder years".
Comments
Post a Comment
I am happy to know what you think. Just be civil and refrain from explicits please. Thank you for visiting my blog :)