What is the meaning of family? In the words of Barbara Bush, former first lady of the U.S. “To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there.” Most people think the meaning of family is to find someone and have children, but the real meaning of family is to create good memories with those persons. It gives them the support and basis to trust in another person and feel love. That is what my family means to me. They are the guide of my life, and my grandparents are a good example of love. The house where my family and I grew up is where we had the best memories of our lives. In 2013, my family moved to U.S., so we do not share a lot as before. Since that year, I never felt such peace and support as in the house where my family and I used to live.
My grandparent’s house is in Palmira, Colombia. It is a big house with five bedrooms and three bathrooms. My grandma and grandpa had four children, and we are seven grandchildren. This house was built by my grandpa in 1940 with the purpose of giving my grandma the comfort to have her own house. When the grandchildren began to grow, this house became our play center. The first room of the house, we called the music room. It had a radio, microphone, and cassettes.We felt like we were in a recording booth, so we created a radio station called “the voice”. We simulated the locutory voices, the announcements, and we were the singers. Moreover, one time we used up all the cassettes that my grandpa had given to us to play, so we used his cassettes where he used to record the music he loves, like ballads and poetry. We knew he was going to get mad, but he could not punish to us because we are his favorite persons in the world. Since that date, he tells that story every time we speak through the phone.
While my grandpa remembers those moments, it brings me back to the living room of the house. Every Christmas Eve, while we were waiting for the gifts, we used to stay together singing the Christmas songs and some typical Colombian music, like salsa. All my cousins and I were between five years old and ten years old, so we loved and played the same things, as shared with grandpa. Also, in the living room we lived exciting moments with the soccer games. We loved to watch the Colombian soccer team playing in the World Cup. Everybody brought drinks and some snacks. On the other hand, my grandma enjoyed the moment, but just for the first 20 minutes. She was most of the time in the kitchen, cooking for the whole family.
If my grandpa loves music, my grandma loves cooking. Every time we went to her house, she gave us food all the time. It did not matter if we just ate at home because we had to eat her food, or she got sad. The good thing was that her food was the best. Even a rice or juice was delicious. I think she got the gift of God to cook perfect food, and she loved to see us happy and telling her that her food was the best. That was one of the things that made her happy. One time for Christmas my grandma baked cookies for the neighbors, but my cousins and I could not resist the smell of fresh baked cookie, and we just ate all of them. Grandma was so mad because she woke up at five in the morning to bake those cookies. She told us that she was not going to cook for us again. We were so worried about it that we baked new cookies for the neighbors. At the end of the day, she was laughing to see us running in the kitchen with our faces and clothes covered with powder, trying to bake new cookies. She forgave us, but the condition was we had to promise her we would never do it again.
The kitchen was not the only precious place in the house for grandma, the small backyard was also her treasure. There, she had a lot of flowers, any kind of flowers that you can recognize, so for us that was the perfect place to create new games. For example, one of the games was the garden store. We imagined that we were gardeners with the biggest store in the world, and every time somebody bought a flower we cut it and gave it to the customer. As result of this game, we destroyed thousands of flowers. For that reason, we had to change that game for a new one. Which was trying to find animals inside of the planter baskets. The only thing we found was small worms, but at the end of the day all the backyard ended up dirty. My grandma was tired of cleaning every time we went to visit her, so we needed to find a new place for new games.
My naughty cousins and I decided to move to the big backyard. We found that this one had more things to do than the small one. It had fruits like strawberry, blackberry, and grapes that had the perfect smell of fresh fruit. Also, it had some animals like chickens, dogs, and geese. For instance, the perfect game was to play that we were veterinarians and we cured animals giving them fruit. That was a disaster, those animals just ran when they saw us; however, our imagination was always active. We started our own salsa dance classes in that backyard. For example, in the class everyone had to create a choreography, and at the end of the week we presented our salsa show to our family. That was so fun.
Most of the valuable moments are those when we feel happy, safe, and loved. My family can make me feel all of those at the same time with just a big hug. They are those persons than are always for me and for every member of family when something happens. No matter if it is good or bad, they are always there to help us. We know that we do not spend time together as we used to do it, but every time we meet we begin to remember all those things we did before and the laughs and tears start coming out. This is the reason why my family is the real meaning of love.
