Saturday, August 31, 2019

Blinded by familiarity

Last night my parents and brother and family came over for pehli raat dinner.  It's a tradition that we all get together and spend time together.  We've been doing it for years and everyone assumes that's what we'll do.  We take turns hosting and I have to think for a moment about whose turn it is.  I confuse the where and the when, but still retain vivid snapshots of each year.  I can still remember doing pehli raat with everyone when Yusuf was just a baby and crying his eyes out.  And then we added a few more kids to our thaal in the years to come!

Our thaal usually has ten people.  It's really full and every year we have so much food we can barely fit it all in the thaal.  We go through dish after dish.  There's usually more leftovers than what we started with.  It's wonderful. 

The greatest part of all this is we get together.  Between all the logistics and the craziness of the night we're all together.  We even all clean up together.  Everyone pitches in and gets in each other's way a bit, but we do it together. 

It's automatic and familiar.  It's easy for me to overlook the wonderfulness that's taking place because I'm used to it.  Alhamdolilllah that I'm used to it. 

The wonderfulness is happening all the time.  It's sometimes too familiar.  Taher, notice more.