This weekend was my little niece Hannah's first birthday. The first birthday is a very significant birthday in the Korean culture because of prior low infant survival rates. Some Koreans didn't name their child until after the first birthday because there was no guarantee your child would make it that long.
Hannah (aka "The Banana" or "Peanut Magoo" -- it shouldn't surprise you in the least that I have these names for the little thing) also wore a traditional Korean outfit called a hanbok with bright pink, red and yellow material. She looked so cute it was unreal....like a little doll. She had a little hat on too (which we were all surprised to see her tolerate because she had previously absolutely refused to allow that thing to stay on her head for even a second). After the requisite two million photographs of her behind the traditional rainbow-layered rice cake with raisins spelling out happy birthday in Korean, Peanut Magoo got down to business. Her parents set a tray of objects in front of her and she was supposed to look at all the objects and pick one. The one she chose would tell us about her future. From left to right was a small paint brush (predicting a future as an artist), a ruler (predicting a future of being good with her hands or an engineer), a book (predicting a scholarly future), a rock (predicting a future as a geologist) and a pencil (predicting a future as a writer). She was very distracted by all the people crowding around the table and her mother rolling up the long sleeves of her hanbok to allow her little hands to peek out. I moved the rice cake out of her view because she thought that was pretty interesting (I could see why with all the colors and such). My brother tapped all of the objects (I noticed he lingered a little longer on the rock....) and Hannah reached down and grabbed......the paintbrush. There was a loud squeal as Hannah proudly held up the paintbrush and looked around at all the people taking pictures of her. The squeal came from my mother (who was also jumping up and down). "She picked the paintbrush. I'm a very happy grandmother!" Mother was so exuberant that people started taking pictures of HER reaction. It was hilarious. "My mental imaging worked!" [The truth is that my mother had no idea that there'd even be a paintbrush because both of Hannah's parents are scientists.] My mother is a graphic designer and artist so she was so thrilled that Hannah selected that paintbrush. "It was the smallest thing on the tray. She really had to focus on it for her little fingers to grab it." Yes...we all saw that. My mother talked about it Sunday and even mentioned it to me this morning on my drive into Phoenix. Is it just me or is my mother happy? I can imagine in the future when Hannah decides that she wants to be an astro-physicist or something, my mother will say with disappointment "....but you picked the paintbrush...."
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