The ritual

Stepping off the plane and on to MN soil brings me memories both happy and sad.  It was a weird feeling it felt as if I never left and everything was the same, yet things has somehow changed since I've been gone.  I couldn't explain the feelings and thoughts.  I was just glad to be home again.  Of course as luck my bring it, it was snowing but that's okay caused I miss that too, well sort of...:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

After having Thanks Giving at a cousin's house I did the regular routine of visiting my brother and sister.  It was great seeing all of them again and to see how much my nephews and nieces have grown.  Makes me wonder if I will ever have ones of my own, scary thought huh? But hey I am starting to accept it as apart of life, I guess in some odd way you aren't fully full as a person if you don't have kids of your own.  I know many might think this is a traditional way of thinking but it is also a very humanistic instinct.  .    

This year like other years my mother made me do the "tswb-kab" (don't know if that's the correct spelling) again.  Every year around this time the man of the house would have to make another "tswb-kab" for the coming New Year, to bring in luck and good fortune to the family.  I once oppose to this cause in reality only "married" men with kids were the ones who would participate in this ritual, not single and inexperience guys like me  On top of that this was my fathers house and not mine.  But since my father passed away about 5 years ago my mother had always made me do it, and like a good son I did.  And like other years I would always complain about how unnecessary this was right now, and with the same reply from my mother and persuasion that since we had already started it wouldn't be right to just stop one year, so I had to obey.  The only difference this year was that I didn't complain about it like the others.  I'm actually happy, I miss the rituals I miss the gathering and I miss my role as one of my father sons.  Most important I am starting to know myself a little bit more and I guess that is a good thing for me right now.   The crazy thing about this "tswb-kab" thing is that my mother and I don't really know the correct way of doing it.  I laugh at ourselves every time because every year we would ask the same questions like:  how did we do it? What do we say? Etc… but we are bonding and that's the most important part of this ritual.