Family Memories

I remember when I was younger living on the reservation, life was so simple and fun. I had a family that was close, like literally. We all lived within a mile of each other. My grandparents, aunts, cousins, we all had our little big land we resided on.

I guess I never realized it, but I was lucky that I didn’t have to travel far to visit relatives.

Even for holidays, we would just drive about half of a mile to get to the celebration. Those were the best. We would all gather at either my grandma Dorothy’s place or my grandpa Jarvis’ place. I was still a child then, so I just ran around and played games like tag and hide-and-seek. We would play for a while until the food was ready. We would eat while laughing and then after we would go right back to playing.

It was like that on Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, etc. There was always a feeling, to me, of warmth and happiness. Being together and being a family was comforting.

My cousins, sisters, and I were like best friends. We used to have walks early in the morning before the sun came up. We even created a club. The information was printed on paper that included the members, the time of meetings, and the rules. It was quite official. For a couple weeks, we would go to this “secret” place where we planned to build a clubhouse there.

Oh yeah, my sisters and I would sometimes go to our cousin’s house when they weren’t allowed to have people over. When their parents came home, we would run to our grandma’s house or hide if it was too late. We had some very good and hilarious times together. I wish it was still like that.

But as time went on, my relatives and I started going to different schools and finding “cliques” of our own. We started drifting apart. We no longer went on walks or played “house.”

I guess everything slowly changed as we grew up. Some moved away while others stayed.

Those fun and amazing holiday dinners we used to have became less important. We started having dinners with our own families. Now we don’t have them at all. I would call it a miracle to have everyone under the same roof without any anger towards someone these days.

Holidays have become just a regular day. Take today for example, I just stayed home and did nothing. We didn’t go to church or have a dinner. I didn’t even hear anyone say to each other, “Happy Easter!” That’s pretty sad because holidays used to be so fun and exciting. Now I feel like they’re nothing.

I’ve come to the realization that I took those days for granted. I didn’t realize how important they were. I was too busy looking towards the future to enjoy what I had at the time. Now I know, like Kurt Vonnegut said, “Enjoy the little things in life because one day you`ll look back and realize they were the big things.”