Watching the adults carefully, we children were impatient for the solemn part to be over. We usually tossed our lilacs in a heap and started chasing each other around the gravestones. We'd be pulled back by our teachers and families and encouraged to pray for the deceased. Then came the good part: picnics. What's a special day without special food?

When I see how much it means to the Chinese people to have this day to honor their ancestors, I wish I'd been a bit more reverent as a child. When I was raising my children, we lived far from where my family was buried, so I fear I didn't raise them with any real sense of feeling connected to our departed relatives. We lived in a much bigger town, so while their school did honor Memorial Day, it was by watching a parade. Watching is so different from feeling part of something as I did as a child.

I envy the Chinese families I see who come together as several generations follow hallowed rituals. It may be that the younger members are more interested in running around, as we were, but they will look back on these occasions with great nostalgia as they, someday, bring their little ones to the site of their ancestral history. Modern life can be so confusing, changing so fast, a family which pauses once a year to honor those who have gone on before, gives a message of continuity.

I think it says: "We were, we are, and we will be family. On this spot you, too, may rest someday surrounded by loved ones. You will always be cared for here."

I didn't give that to my children because we were so far away from our hometown, chasing the American Dream of prosperity. As more Chinese travel far to chase the Chinese Dream of prosperity and are unable to join their families at Qingming, will some of them someday feel the regret that I feel?