Timeless

It is easy to overlook the things we take for granted, to take advantage of, to accept without question. Often, as human beings, we do not realize what we take for granted unless it is taken away from us. For me, I realized that I took my family for granted because I only realized how precious they were when my family was torn apart.

During the summer, my parents told me that they were completely going to renovate the house I had lived in all my life. My family was forced to find places as a temporary “home” and as a result, was like broken pieces thrown in different places. While living at my aunt’s house, I made it a habit of mine to return to the destroyed house to see the changes. I arrived at the red door with The New York Times plastered all over the enormous glass window. All that’s left were the stairs on which I would constantly fall when I was a child. Everything was knocked down from attic to basement, wall to wall, making it look like an abandoned construction area. Once an abode filled with furniture to shelter three families, my house was now left with shattered debris. It seemed like just a while ago when my entire family – aunt, uncle, grandma, grandpa, cousin, sisters, mom, dad – sat together for weekly brunch every Sunday. My mother would prepare fresh, crisp red and green peppers, celery, and bright red strawberries on a platter, while my grandma prepared her own customized dumplings. We each took turns to talk about our lives and my grandma would occasionally throw in meaningful traditional Chinese adages. As my siblings and I grow older, the feeling of togetherness slowly begins to fade, with my sister, cousin and I attending separate colleges, and with my relatives away at various places because the house had slowly begun to deteriorate.

Without my real home and any tangible form of my memories, I felt a little lonely and incomplete. I missed my grandmother’s simple but meaningful presence, my cousins, whose job, they think, is to never allow the house to be silent, and I missed the weekly bonding time. Most of all, I missed the sense of a family held together by the home in which I lived for seventeen years. The time I spent in that house during my childhood years will forever be unforgettable memories to which I will hold dear. Because of this renovation, I have come to realize that time spent with loved ones should not be taken for granted. Now, I cherish every moment I spend with my family, and especially my grandma. Although a cliché, time, to me, is truly the tool used to collect memories and is irreplaceable.