Specified for the, eldest male heir of the families, and nobody else have it, and it's a time, for the families with the sons to gloat to everybody in the neighborhoods about it, and they're going, all, OUT in this! Translated…
On my sixteenth, my paternal grandmother had someone set up a shrine in the front yard, to make offerings to Alpha Lyrae, to thank her for keeping me healthy and safe.
It was the once-in-a-lifetime coming of age celebration, and we'd gone, all out. Making the rice balls, cooking the sticky rice, killing the livestock, getting the puppet shows playing, we had sixteen tables of banquet feast, for the local neighbors and our next-of-kin, and all the costs were out of my grandmother's own personal, savings. This sort of a grand gesture, was from the age-old beliefs of weighing the sons heavier than the, daughters, at the time, many of the families had, hoped and longed for a male heir, but never could get a son, my grandmother, who was normally very, frugal, went all OUT on this, and, it has the element of, showing, off to everybody who came.
The hog that was from the pen that we had, slaughtered, killed and, put on the offering tables, and what I'd felt upset over was, that goat I'd kept, was always, so thin, and yet, as it got skinned, the skin was huge enough, to expand across the entire yard. The butcher told, that when he'd slaughtered it, he'd found a tumor about the size of the fist inside its, stomach, and that, was where all the nutrients had, gone into, such a shame, as I'd, taken it to the back hills to graze every single day after school.
After this, my grandmother started, raising up the hogs, and, made the straw hats, to replenish the money she'd, spent on this. To put the money that's spent up back in, my younger brother and I, started, harvesting the yam leaves that are used as the feeds for the hogs, we'd taken turns, stepping flat the weeds my grandmother needed to make the straw hats with, we'd kept on, mumbling—not in complaints of why we needed to work, but to recite the English vocabulary words, and the mathematic, formulas.
The sixteenth birthday celebrations, from the looks of the guests and the adults, I'd, received my adult personal identification, and, I'd become, more matured because of that.
P.S., "Sixteenth birthday" is special in that it's a ritual celebration for the coming of age in the farming villages, and, this only happens for the eldest grandson in the families, some don't go all out in planning and getting the celebration going.
So, this, is a tradition, of the local cultures, because, sixteen is a sort of a crossing over into adulthood, like Quincenera, or the Sweet Sixteenth celebrations, and all this means, is that you'd, entered into, the next stages of your life, and the adults who are very traditional, made such a big deal of it.
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