The Spirit of Raya

Well, raya has come to pass and it's been okay. Spectacular. We went back to my parent's hometown. We spent like a week there, enjoying ourselves and basically sticking to the same raya routine. Going back a few days before raya. One of the best things i like when we all spend time during raya is when we break our fast. My grandfather's three daughters would gather their ilk and we would break fast with the most wonderful array of food. Simple but....there is nothing like the taste of a meal shared with a very large family. I guess the people makes the most difference.

Then, when the time has dawn on us,we would spend the first day of raya together. My mom is always the one that is up first. This year i kind of slept a little early. like at 9, so i was the second one to wake up, but i always wake up after my mother. I'd help her with stuff, like this year i helped her mop the floor at 5 in the morning. It's a very good thing too because my aunt's little demon's...I mean children kind of get in the way at times. One of them likes to vacuum but for the wrong purpose. I don't even know what's wrong with that child.

The main reason I always wake up early is for one purpose only. The bathroom. The race is always on. I am the type of person that likes my bath to be long and through, so i have to fight for my god given right. But unfortunately I tend to lose. We would then go to pray and come back to ask forgiveness and get the money. Money is always on everyone's mind. The question is receiving or giving.

Then we would go visit our relatives. God help us. There are quite a few and to tackle them all in a day is next to impossible. So we usually break it down to two days, one for the near ones and another for the tad bit further ones. That's like my next favorite thing. I love going to my parent's relatives (mostly my mom's because there's not much of my dad's left, which is kinda odd considering it's my dad's hometown too).... oh wait, before i forget, the best thing about raya overall, at least for me is both of my parents are from the same place, just a few kilometers away. No need to bicker where to go back this raya or next and no need to commute between states or whatever. Although my dad's parent's are no longer here, it's still a plus for me now as it was back then.

Right, back too...yes, I just love visiting relatives, seeing them so happy to see you. Enjoying food and just have a blast.

But there is always a catch. During the second day of raya, the gates of hell are opened, at least at my grandfather's house anyway. We would never go anywhere during this day. Usually we would have nasi lemak and that is when these huge hordes of people would come with three or four cars filled with relatives and they would swarm my grandfather's small house. And god, the cycle repeats like four times or so. I don't know from where they come from but damn, they sure know how to time themselves pretty accurately. And conveniently, we would be the only ones there, with my aunts going to their in-laws. So, it like all hands on deck. Refill the rice, make more drinks, refill this, chop that, boil more eggs. Pure utter chaos.

Oh, this year i got a little surprise. We were sending of one batch of people off, saying our goodbyes and this little kid was like scared that there was ants in his shoes. I was like what, you're in the village, it happens all the time. Then his mom told him to hurry up and he began speaking in Hungarian. I was like, did he just spoke parsel tongue or something? My mom told me her family has living there for a while and i was like ohhh, that makes sense.

And this year we celebrated my chubby little niece's birthday at my grandfather's house for her very first birthday. We, that is my siblings and I pitched in and bought her a toy car thing that she could ride on. Unfortunately she is gets scared by the noises it makes, so we'll wait till she has the courage to ride on it and pretty much run over everyone's feet.

Lastly we would go back home, and continue our tradition of visiting people here with all it's open houses and invites.

As days go by, I keep feeling that the spirit of raya is slowly fading. With my grandmother bedridden and people growing up, the bright shine that raya use to meant to me seems to be growing dimmer as the years go by. But I hold on to the hope that the spirit can be rekindled as I get a better understanding of what it means to be a part of something bigger than myself. A part of a family.