MY New Year always begins with..

A family reunion.

Since time immemorial, relatives from my father side has religiously organized and attended our family reunion every January 1st. Before, it was just held at one place. As the years went by, they (my father and his siblings) decided to hold the reunion in different places thus changing the "sponsor" or the "host" for the year.

Though we get to meet every year, I still find myself lost and always in a lock down situation trying to spit out a name of a cousin or of a cousin's child which I don't really have any idea of. It's as if my cousins and my um.. cousin's children kept on multiplying.. like rats rabbits.

Our family reunion is not the only one that became the tradition. But also, some of the activities that my aunts and uncles has thought of since I was a kid -- hampas palayok and padukot sa bangga. 

As a kid, I used to love trying my luck (yes, I consider it a game of luck) in the game of Hampas Palayok. But since I never got lucky, I stopped trying. And as the years went by, I became all but a spectator of my cousins, cousins' children and even my aunts and uncles reap the bounty of their winnings..

Towards the end of the reunion, my dad would bring out his famous "banga" and ask all the kids and kids at heart to line up before him to go get as much money (coins) they could from the jar.

Well yeah, the jar only contains coins. Before, coins were a big thing. But since they have depreciated in value, my parents got a little creative with those coins -- they marked several coins inside the jar to a certain amount where the lucky kid or kidult can exchange for a bigger, heavier denomination.

 

*****

 

With the family's therapist to be

With my favorite cousin