(My love-hate relationship with Eid has been flourishing
since I was younger. Overtime, it's more on the love part and less on the hate
part. My dad was a very traditional person and Eid used to mean endless visit
to older relatives-- and there are lots
of them. I remember enjoying the visits and eating all the cookies when I was
younger, hating it and being a sulky teenager who put up an attitude when I got lost at small
talks, and start playing a team work of cancelling Eid visits with
my two little sisters. I don't know when exactly the number of those visits
start decreasing and Eid start becoming a beautiful ritual of big family dinner
the night before, sitting by the window waiting for the glorious light from
hundreds of torches carried by children while praising God and walking together
around the village, the morning prayer at one of the most beautiful prairie
soaked in warm morning sun amidst the cold mountain air, and the family
gathering right after that.
Eid holiday makes me falls in love with the idea of
staycation and food as the most effective tool to foster a relationship. Oh, the
food! I remember that one time when
my aunt went out of town on the first day of Eid and suddenly there was a big
empty space in the holiday spirit that year without the chicken curry and spicy
beef-liver curry she makes every year. Eid would also mean homemade
calories-loaded dish served mercilessly, uber-delicious bread-and-butter
pudding from a neighbor that my other aunt would bring, lots and lots of
chocolate to brawl about with my little sisters (the friendly-brawling always become the best part of it), those perfect cakes my uncle brings, and the Javanese-style rendang my mom's cook will
make before he went back home for his holiday. If there is one thing that never changes, it is the feast and endless
shopping sessions for food, fresh flowers, and gifts. It is the time of the
year when heavy consumption is collectively tolerated.
But Eid, so I realized when I grow up, is never exactly the same every year. That is why the presence of those rituals are very comforting and reassuring. Other than that, Eid is keep on changing along with the family's movements. When I
was still in the university and my sisters are still around, we would
binge-watch Disney's movies or gather around in silence reading fantasy while
nibbling on bottomless cookies. When I moved to the city, going back home was
an act of vain success symbol and irrational splurging. Thank God it was only
that one time before I move back to my senses. When my sisters and I start
learning to bake; we would spend a day making strange mixture of milk and
cheese cookies, brownies, and weird-shaped food that mom would brag about. There always a time when my uncle would impulsively ask me to help him throw big barbecue parties at the garden in the afternoon and the children can taste a drop of Bailey's
during one of the family dinner a night before. That was when I taste my very
first alcohol in a Kahlua mix that was way too sweet even for my young taste
bud.
When I got married, Dito took me to my very first Eid
mobility across region which I loved at first and despise two years later.
Apparently, I am more of a stay-in Eid lover than the roadtrip-goer person. We
then would start our annual house cleaning session, buying a bunch of fresh
flower to put around the house, and stocking up food like we are about to face
a zombie apocalypse. There are lots of baking-session happening in the
house, afternoon spent reading together, an annual day-out with my friend Anna,
gathering invitations for different groups of friends, and some exhausting yet
satisfying days of endless friend and family visits. This year, we decided to
do Eid night a bit differently. Instead of staying in, we stayed at Dito's parents’
house and went for a night ride around the city, had gelato for two instead
of having big family dinner that night, and came across some youth on the back
of some truck chanting praise to God on highroad instead of seeing them walking
around their neighborhood holding torches gracefully. At that moment (and in the case of NYE too) I bragged,
"Apparently, we do things better in Kaliurang, don’t we?” Maybe it was the weather.
The ritual keeps on changing but the togetherness always
warms the heart—when served in the right portion. I still loathe the big big-family gathering with hundreds of people I don’t recognize
shaking hand and forgive each other for wrongdoing they didn’t even have the
chance to do as some of them are only meeting each other once a year. I still have mixed
feeling when meeting my old friends from school and see them change so much;
like yesterday when I met the cute senior I had a crush on when I was 9 and see
that the bad boy who used to steal my hat and put it up on the tree turned into
the sweetest gentleman who teaches toddlers for a living-- and suspected gay,
naturally.. And on top of it, I still hate the fact that my uncle is not coming and my sister went back to
the city before Eid ends, leaving a part of the holiday incomplete and gave a twinge of melancholy when she left.. Like today.)