This Is Not Our First Holiday Season Away From Our Families
Immigrants have long felt the pain of being separated from loved ones
The first conscious, whole memories I have of meeting my extended family are right around my 16th birthday — at my grandmother’s funeral. Rather than celebrating the typical American Sweet Sixteen, I was flown to India for the first time in over 10 years to mourn someone I had barely known in a country I hardly recognized. Yet it was something to be grateful for: finally really meeting the aunts, uncles, and grandparents who had raised me, nurtured me, and held me as a child before my family moved to the United States 20 years ago.
It should come as no surprise then that most of our holidays were also spent without this extended family. Diwalis consisted of my brother and me lighting diyas around our childhood home in central New Jersey, listening to our parents reminisce about how much fun the festive season was in India, how many dozens of people celebrating light and love they were surrounded by, something that I will never fully experience. Thanksgivings and Christmases were more or less the same, spent alone or with a small group of chosen family that we made do with.
Let it be known — this isn’t another dreary Desi diasporic ode to my mother’s chai. Rather, it’s an ode to…
