Daily Cascade

Happy Times

Prompt:
Write about your favorite Thanksgiving memories for your entry today. If you don't celebrate, your favorite meal memory.

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Here's my happy meals memories, since I already wrote about my Thanksgiving memories, yesterday.

When I was a child, in summers usually, my grandmother's younger brother used to come visit us and stay with us for a month or more. He was a one of the elders of the family and was a judge in a faraway place. During the time he stayed with us, just about our whole family came to visit to see him. Most family members lived nearby, then; although a few others who lived farther away would stay the night, also. Luckily, our house was large enough.

Still, some nights, the house would be so full that they made us kids share beds, with several beds in the same room, some on the floor made from mattresses, pillows, and sheets. I would be in seventh heaven, then, because I was an only child to my mother, and I loved all my cousins as I still do. Probably, this is because people who share little mischiefs usually stay close for life. During most of those nights, we ended up whispering to one another, until the wee hours. We had invented signals to let everyone know that an adult was on the way up the stairs, to check up on us. Then, the whole room would be quiet except for a few of us who couldn't contain our giggles.

In those days, my grandmother would cook and bake from our family's traditional, favorite recipes. Some of those were ground beef and onion filled pastries as a side for soup or salad. Others were sweets with dripping honey or gooey syrup. Adults in the house also put us together around a kids' table for meals, and after one of those gooey deserts, some adult would come with a washcloth and a tiny tub of soapy water and say, "Don't anyone move!" We were only let go after she would be done with us. We were still expected to wash up ourselves afterwards, but that washcloth and soapy water was for the syrupy stuff as a preliminary clean up.

Fast forward about seven decades from then, no more are the adults and a good number of my cousins from those days, and today, my remaining cousins are scattered all over the world, although we still keep in touch through technology, thank God. I guess, life always goes on, although people are made to be expendable, except for the memories.