As-Salaamu 'Alaikum, welcome back. Ramadan Mubarak
Okay, so, skipping the intro let's just jump right back into it. So since hardly anyone read the last one anyways, I'm not sure I'll bother making this one quite as long. Anyways, getting into it, for today's memories I want to delve into some of the other habits and practices that happened during Ramadan in my household, though many of them seem to have died off.
The first which comes to mind is a simple kindness we would all do at suhoor. All the branches of my family (ie my household, my aunt, my aunt, grandmother, etc) would try to make sure no one missed suhoor on any of the days; so when we got up, whoever was preparing the food, someone else would go to the phone (I just remembered the phone we had lol, white plug in phone, even before wireless) and call up the other households.
The funny thing is, it was never organized or anything. So like some of the times I'd be doing the calling and I'd call Aunt A and then as I'm trying to call Aunt T my grandmother would call me and in that time Aunt T would have called Aunt A. It wasn't a huge gesture or anything, but it gave us a bit of unity, all having suhoor together in a sense, and plus I mean, it prevented us from getting together and finding that someone else is in a bad mood because they haven't eaten since iftar the day before or something lol.
I tried to keep this practice alive for as long as I could. When my brothers moved out I would text or call them, even when one was in a different time zone I would just be up a couple of hours earlier and text anyways. One year, I continued it past Ramadan because some relatives (I'm not mentioning who or how they're related) weren't keeping up with their prayers. I started text spamming them at Fajr to get up and pray, and I continued it throughout the day for every other salah too. They didn't appreciate it, but it got them praying for a while...
Anyways, now that seems to have died. Admittedly, it's not completely any one person's fault. Aunt T can no longer fast due to health, Grandma is on the other side of the world with Aunt K, and Aunt T sleeps through the calls now so the only way to get her up is for one of her daughters to wake her, and the only one of them who wakes up is also the one who doesn't bother looking at her phone until long after Fajr. So no point there. Brothers don't really like it either, so they're scratched off the list, and well, yeah. That sucks.
But from starting our fast we're going to jump ahead to ending it. So this is just something my siblings and I did as kids. So, does anyone remember that once upon a time you could dial a certain number and it would tell you the exact time in your location? I remember for Verizon the number was 853-1212 (we called it that much lol). And the lady would say, "The time is brought to you by Verizon: 8:22 pm and 31 seconds."
And so like, okay, we lived in a not-so-pleasant-not-so-safe-not-so-good neighborhood, so my mom wouldn't always let us step outside to see if the sun had set. Plus, with the mountains in the horizon, sometimes the sun would just be hidden there but not really set depending on the angle, so to avoid that trickery we would sometimes just rely on the scheduled timers they always give at the Masjid. And so as the time got closer, my siblings and I would just keep "calling time" every few minutes to calculate how much longer we have to wait lol.
Some of us stopped once we realized what a disservice we were doing to ourselves and our fasts by just waiting around for the end instead of taking advantage of the time, but it's still funny to remember lol. Especially some of the times picking up the phone line in the kitchen and dialing in the number only to realize that my mom was on the phone in her room talking to her sister or friend already lol. Oops.
Anyways, I said I wasn't making this post long today so I won't. I'll just leave off on one more thing that just happened to me this year. So, twas the first day of fasting and my family was having a potluck for iftar so we could all cook and such. So I was at my aunt's house and had just broken my fast and prayed Maghrib and was heading back to the kitchen to finish cooking. My cousin came and offered me some almonds, and I took some and then I started to put them away because my mind told me, "I should save these until iftar and I'll have a nice snack..."
-_______- Then I had to facepalm. It was just out of habit because I've been offered food so many times while fasting and sometimes I just take it for later, so my brain defaulted to that and I was, for a moment, thinking that I was still fasting. It is pretty ironic, some people tend to forget they ARE fasting. I happened to forget I WASN'T fasting.
Oh, and speaking of that, okay so we've all probably had at least one incident in which we forgot that we were fasting at some point in our lives, be it during Ramadan or any other time of the year. So we drink a little water or eat something before spitting it out and violently rinsing our mouths lol. The good thing is, your fast is still valid and whatever food you ate was just Mercy from Allah feeding you.
But has it ever happened in a way that you're like preparing the food/or drink and your mouth is watering, but before you can get any, THEN you realize your fasting? Lol. That is so much worse. I can't tell you how many times someone in my household has either poured themselves a glass of ice water, or made a sandwich, or even a pack of noodles or something, and then as they're setting up their plate/bowl, they realized "I am fasting. I cannot eat this. -____-" lol it's funny but it's sad. Especially with the noodles or something like cereal because you can't even save that for iftar later. You just have to hope someone in the house isn't fasting at the time or something so you don't have to waste the food.
Anyways, now that I've reached over 1,000 words, I think I shall end this post. As always, thank you for reading another part in my journey of life, don't forget to share your experiences and memories in the comments down below. Have a wonderful day/night wherever you are, and uh, yeah....idk how to end this.
As-Salaamu 'Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh
-Desert Son
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Desert Son: Tales of Le_Muslim_MAN
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