Celebrations

If celebrations are defined in part by the extravagance of the food, half my life has been spent celebrating—everything from a clumsy first piano recital (see “Ito Ako,”) to a hundredth birthday (see Pork Bellychon). My family was always on the lookout for an excuse for a party, because it meant being together, everyone crowded into one house: aunties and uncles both official and unofficial, and cousins of such obscure lineage, I don’t even know if we were really related, the family tree big enough to hold us all. My lola cooked for days, and we measured our lives in bites of Chicken Relleno and Pastel de Lengua. Sometimes we didn’t even need an excuse; we just celebrated our continuing, in this place far from what my elders once knew as home, in a country they had finally made their own.