Cousins in Six Time Zones

My family is spread across four countries: Canada, England, Egypt and Malaysia. We used to see each other once every few years, at weddings. This spring, when everyone was stuck at home, my cousin in London started a weekly video game night.

The first one was chaos. Twenty-one people, six time zones, nobody muted. My aunt in Cairo held her phone so close to her face we could only see one eyebrow. My uncle in Kuala Lumpur kept falling asleep because it was two in the morning there.

But we kept doing it. Every Saturday. We played trivia, charades and a drawing game where my eighty-year-old grandmother turned out to be shockingly competitive. My little cousins put on a puppet show. My aunt shared her lentil soup recipe, and the next week, half of us made it.

I've talked to my family more this year than in the previous ten put together. We've decided to keep game night going forever. My grandmother has already declared herself champion for life.