The first time I tried to make my grandmother’s sinigang in my tiny apartment kitchen, I cried. Not because I burned the garlic or because the imported tamarind paste tasted wrong—though it did—but because the steam rising from the pot carried a memory so vivid it knocked the breath out of me. I was suddenly eight years old again, standing on a stool beside Lola’s stove, watching her drop river spinach into a bubbling, sour broth. The scent was a bridge across oceans and years, and I realized how desperately I had been starving for it.
Moving away from home—whether it’s across the country or across the world—does something strange to the traditions you once held without thinking. They become fragile. They slip through your fingers like sand the moment you stop actively gripping them. For months after I moved, I let them go. I told myself I was adapting, embracing the new, becoming a citizen of everywhere. But what I really felt was a quiet, persistent grief. A hollowing out.
Reclaiming those traditions didn’t happen all at once. It was a slow, deliberate stitching back together of scattered pieces. And it started, as so many things do, in the kitchen.
The Scent of Belonging
Smell is the most primitive of our senses, wired directly into the brain’s memory and emotion centers. That’s why a whiff of something familiar can transport you more powerfully than a photograph. When I moved away, I lost the everyday smells of my childhood: the sharp, grassy scent of pandan leaves tied in knots, the earthy steam of rice cooking in a bamboo basket, the faint smokiness of grilled fish from the neighbor’s yard. My new city smelled of coffee chains, wet asphalt, and other people’s dinners drifting through thin walls.
I started small. I bought a bundle of lemongrass and left it on my counter, not even to cook with—just to bruise a stalk now and then and hold it to my nose. I simmered a pot of water with ginger and calamansi peels, not to drink, but to fill my studio with a scent that said you are home. These were tiny rituals, almost silly, but they anchored me. They told my body that this unfamiliar space could still hold the essence of where I came from.
Soon, I was chasing scents intentionally. I learned to make atchara—pickled green papaya—not because I loved eating it, but because the vinegar and sugar and julienned carrots reminded me of fiesta tables laden with glass jars of the stuff. The kitchen became a sanctuary. The hiss of garlic hitting hot oil was a prayer. The sour-sweet steam of adobo reducing on the stove was a hymn.
Objects as Altars
Tradition lives in objects, too. Back home, our house was cluttered with things I never thought about: a wooden spoon worn smooth by decades of stirring, a capiz-shell chandelier that tinkled in the breeze, my mother’s collection of santos—hand-carved religious figures with glass eyes that seemed to follow you around the room. In my new apartment, everything was IKEA-clean, functional, anonymous. It felt like a hotel. It felt like no one lived there, least of all me.
I started reclaiming objects. Not by shipping heavy furniture across the ocean, but by finding small, portable pieces of home. A handwoven banig mat that I use as a wall hanging. A clay pot from the market back home, smuggled in my carry-on, now holding my cooking spoons. A framed photograph of my grandmother’s hands, wrinkled and sure, resting on her lap. These objects became altars. They didn’t just decorate my space; they consecrated it. They reminded me that I come from somewhere, that I belong to a lineage of hands that have kneaded, stirred, woven, and prayed.
I also started wearing pieces of home. A beaded bracelet my aunt made. A scarf dyed with indigo from my province. These weren’t fashion statements; they were quiet declarations of identity. On days when I felt invisible in a foreign crowd, touching the beads on my wrist was a way of saying, I am still here. I am still this.
Language as a Living Thread
One of the first things to fade when you move away is your mother tongue. Not the formal version you might still use on phone calls with parents, but the intimate, colloquial language—the jokes, the endearments, the words for specific kinds of rain or rice or longing. I noticed it when I couldn’t remember the term for the crispy burnt rice at the bottom of the pot. Tutong. The word came back to me days later, in the middle of washing dishes, and I said it out loud like a found treasure.
I started keeping a notebook of these words. Not a dictionary, but a personal lexicon of the phrases that held emotional weight. Gigil—the overwhelming urge to pinch something cute. Kilig—the butterflies of romantic excitement. Umay—that specific feeling of having eaten too much of the same rich thing. Writing them down felt like gathering scattered seeds. I planted them in my journal, and they grew back into my daily thoughts.
I also began speaking to myself in my first language. In the shower, while cooking, during my commute. It felt strange at first, like wearing clothes that no longer fit. But slowly, the words softened. They became mine again. I started dreaming in my mother tongue, and woke up feeling less fragmented.
Recreating the Calendar of Home
One of the deepest losses I felt was the rhythm of the year. Back home, the calendar was punctuated by familiar beats: the nine-day Simbang Gabi masses before Christmas, the sticky rice cakes of New Year’s, the somber processions of Holy Week, the riotous town fiestas with their marching bands and greasy lechon. In my new country, these days passed unnoticed. December 25th came and went with no parol lanterns in the windows. No one was selling puto bumbong outside the church.
So I built my own calendar. I marked the dates on my phone: the start of Simbang Gabi, the feast day of my town’s patron saint, the anniversary of my grandmother’s passing. On those days, I created small ceremonies. I lit a candle. I cooked a dish that belonged to that occasion. I video-called my family and asked them to show me the altar they had set up, the food they had prepared. I was no longer just observing from afar; I was participating, even if my version was smaller, quieter, a solo act.
This practice taught me something essential: tradition is not a museum piece. It is not fragile porcelain to be kept behind glass. It is a living thing, and it can adapt. My Simbang Gabi became a solitary dawn walk with a thermos of hot chocolate. My town fiesta became a dinner party where I taught friends to eat with their hands. The forms shifted, but the heart remained.
The Ritual of Storytelling
I come from a culture of storytellers. My grandfather could spin a tale about a carabao and a mango tree that would last an entire afternoon. My aunts traded gossip and legends over endless cups of instant coffee. Stories were how we passed down values, warnings, jokes, and histories. When I moved away, I lost that constant hum of narrative. My life became quieter, but also emptier.
I started telling stories to myself. I wrote them down, first in a private journal, then in letters to friends, then on this blog. I told the story of how my parents met, of the ghost that supposedly lived in our ancestral home, of the time my uncle caught a fish so big it took four men to carry it. In telling these stories, I was not just preserving them; I was re-inhabiting them. I was placing myself back inside the narrative of my family, my community, my culture.
I also started asking for stories. In phone calls, instead of just reporting the facts of my week, I asked my mother to tell me about her childhood. I asked my father to describe the town as it was before the highway came. These stories became new threads in the fabric of my identity. They reminded me that I am part of something larger than my own small, transient life.
Food as Memory, Food as Home
No exploration of tradition would be complete without a deeper dive into food. For me, cooking the dishes of my childhood is the most direct line to my past. But it’s not just about the recipes. It’s about the process—the patient pounding of spices in a mortar, the careful wrapping of suman in banana leaves, the long slow simmer of kare-kare until the oxtail falls apart. These techniques are themselves traditions, passed down through hands and eyes rather than written instructions.
I had to relearn many of them. My grandmother never used measuring cups; she measured by feel, by the look of the batter, by the sound of the sizzle. I called her once, frantic, because my bibingka wasn’t rising. She laughed and said, “Apong, you just have to listen to the batter. It will tell you when it’s ready.” I stood in my kitchen, phone pressed to my ear, and listened. The batter bubbled softly. It was ready.
Now, when I cook these dishes, I’m not just feeding myself. I’m feeding my longing. I’m feeding the part of me that still lives in my grandmother’s kitchen, the part that will always be eight years old, watching and learning. And when I share these meals with friends who have never tasted anything like them, I’m extending my tradition outward. I’m making it visible, tangible, shareable. I’m saying, this is who I am. Taste it.
Building a Community of Memory
One of the hardest things about moving away is the loss of community. Traditions are rarely solitary; they thrive in groups, in the collective repetition of familiar acts. Without a community, traditions can feel hollow, like clapping with one hand. I missed the chaos of family gatherings, the overlapping voices, the children running underfoot, the old women nodding in the corners.
I couldn’t replicate that, but I could build something new. I started hosting small gatherings—dinners, tea afternoons, craft sessions—where I invited others to share their own traditions. I taught them to make lumpia, and they taught me to fold dumplings. We exchanged stories of our grandmothers’ kitchens, our hometown festivals, our childhood superstitions. In that exchange, I found a new kind of community: one built not on shared geography, but on shared longing for geography. We were all exiles, in our own ways, and we became each other’s temporary homelands.
These gatherings taught me that tradition can be a bridge between cultures, not just a wall around one. When my Italian friend recognized the joy of hand-rolling pasta in my lumpia-making, or when my Indian neighbor saw her own spice blends in my adobo marinade, we found common ground. Tradition, it turns out, is deeply specific and universally human at the same time.
When Traditions Feel Too Heavy
I want to be honest: not all traditions are comforting. Some carry weight—expectations, obligations, memories of people who are gone or relationships that were complicated. Reclaiming tradition can sometimes feel like opening a closet full of things you’re not ready to sort through. I have recipes I still can’t make because they taste too much of loss. I have songs I can’t sing because they bring back a particular voice.
That’s okay. Reclaiming doesn’t mean taking everything back at once. It means choosing, carefully and kindly, what to carry forward. Some traditions I’ve modified to remove the parts that hurt. Others I’ve let rest, trusting that they’ll be there when I’m ready. And a few I’ve consciously released, acknowledging that they belonged to a version of my life that no longer exists.
This discernment is itself a tradition—the practice of passing down not just objects and rituals, but wisdom about what to keep and what to let go. My grandmother didn’t keep every pot she ever owned. She kept the ones that worked, the ones that held heat well, the ones that fit her hands. I try to do the same with my intangible inheritances.
Making New Traditions from Old Roots
The most surprising part of this journey has been the birth of new traditions. They sprouted unexpectedly from the soil of the old ones, hybrid plants adapted to my new climate. Every Sunday evening, I now do a “home hour”: I light a candle, play music from my childhood, and cook something that takes time. It’s not a tradition anyone taught me; it’s one I grew myself, from the seeds of Simbang Gabi dawns and slow Sunday lunches and the quiet of my grandmother’s afternoon prayers.
I’ve also started a practice of “ancestor letters”—writing to my grandparents about my life now, updating them on the traditions I’m keeping and the ones I’m inventing. I know they can’t read them. But the act of writing makes me feel connected, accountable, part of an ongoing conversation. It’s a tradition of remembrance that I hope to pass on someday, to children or nieces or friends who need a way to stay tethered to their roots.
These new traditions are not betrayals of the old ones. They are continuations. They are proof that tradition is not static, that it breathes and bends and grows. My grandmother’s sinigang used river spinach because that’s what grew near her. I use kale sometimes, because that’s what grows near me. The sour broth is the same. The love is the same. The adaptation is the tradition itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I start reclaiming traditions if I feel completely disconnected?
Begin with a single sensory thread. Choose one smell, one taste, or one sound that reminds you of home, and bring it into your current space. It could be a spice, a song, a piece of fabric. Don’t pressure yourself to do it “right.” Just let that one thing exist in your daily life and notice how it makes you feel. From there, other threads will follow naturally.
What if my family traditions are tied to painful memories?
You have permission to be selective. Tradition is not an all-or-nothing inheritance. You can keep the parts that nourish you and gently set aside the parts that hurt. You can also reshape traditions to remove the painful elements while preserving the core meaning. This is not disrespect; it’s stewardship. You are caring for your heritage by making it sustainable for your own life.
Can I create new traditions that still honor my roots?
Absolutely. In fact, adaptation is one of the oldest traditions of all. Our ancestors constantly modified their practices based on new environments, available ingredients, and changing circumstances. A new tradition that carries the spirit of the old one is a living tradition. Ask yourself: what is the essence of this practice? What feeling or value does it hold? Then find a way to express that essence in your current context.
How can I share my traditions with people who don’t share my background?
Invite them into the experience, not just the explanation. Cook a meal together, teach a song, show them a craft. Let them participate rather than just observe. Be open to their questions and to the ways your tradition might remind them of their own. Sharing traditions is an act of hospitality, and it often creates a space where others feel safe to share theirs in return.
Reclaiming traditions after moving away is not about building a museum of the past. It’s about weaving a living rope that connects you to where you came from, even as you stand firmly in a new place. It’s about letting your grandmother’s hands guide yours, even from across the ocean. It’s about filling your apartment with the scent of sinigang and letting the steam carry you home.
