Families — Unit 4, Pre-intermediate to Intermediate English

Every Sunday, my family meets at my **grandmother**'s flat near the park for lunch. My **parents** arrive first with salads and bread, then my older brother with his wife and baby son, who is the youngest member of our family. My grandmother always cooks too much food, and everyone wants to hold the baby because he has my father's smile.

During lunch we talk about work, school, and plans for the summer. My brother and I sometimes argue about football, but it never lasts long because my grandmother tells us to calm down. After we eat, my **grandfather** tells stories about his childhood in the mountains, which makes our **family history** feel real. These Sundays give us **support**, laughter, and a feeling of belonging, even when the table is messy and everyone is tired by evening.

It has not always been like this. My grandparents **grew up** in a village three hundred kilometres from here, and when they were young they had almost nothing. My grandfather left school at fourteen to work with his father. He says he does not want us to feel sorry about it, because he was happy — but he also says he would have liked to study.

They **moved away** from the village in 1979, when my father was six. My grandmother told me once that she cried on the bus the whole way. Two of her sisters stayed behind, and for years they only wrote letters. She **lost touch** with one of them completely, and they did not speak again for nineteen years.

That is why she insists on Sundays. She is not really interested in the food. She is making sure that we cannot **lose touch** the way she did.

Things are changing again now. My cousin Elif has just **moved out** to study in another country, and she joins us on a video call from her kitchen at exactly one o'clock. My brother's baby will **grow up** thinking that a screen at the end of the table is completely normal.

Next year my parents want to take my grandmother back to the village. She says the house will not be there any more, and she is probably right.

I hope we go anyway.