Happy Worries
I gently brushed the good boy's hair back from his forehead.
"If you play happily with Luca today, Reni, that will be the best present he could ask for."
"…Okay."
Reni answered with a shy little smile. A moment later he glued himself to my leg and giggled. I stroked his sweet head and patted his back.
I handed Luca—still locked in a fierce battle of unicorn bubble guns and imaginary snowballs—over to Greg for a moment, then scooped Reni up and set him on a dining chair. It was time for today's main event.
"Hang on just a second."
I bolted for the workshop and came back carrying the gift—and the event—I had been preparing in my own clumsy way for the past few days.
Wanting to do something special for Luca's first birthday, I had gone digging through baby-birthday ideas and stumbled on Korea's doljabi tradition. So I decided to make it our birthday event. Reading a child's future from the object they pick up—wasn't that interesting?
While researching what items a doljabi needed, I had come across commercial baby sets online. The wooden pieces got good reviews because kids could keep playing with them after the ritual ended. Waiting for a shipment from Korea to America, though, would have taken forever—and more importantly, simply looking at the product was enough for me to recreate the whole set myself…
"Whoa!"
The moment I set the wooden tray on the table, Reni was the first to react again. A wooden pencil, a book, a coin, a syringe, a spool of thread, a microphone, an airplane, a spaceship… I had made as many traditional doljabi objects as I could, plus a few modern favorites.
While Reni stared at the little models in wonder, I pulled a yellow-painted wooden star—about the size of a palm—from my back pocket and held it out to him.
"Here. This one's yours. You'll get to play with the others too, of course, but I made this one specially for you."
"Whoa."
Reni accepted the star with both hands and breathed the word like a secret. He seemed thoroughly delighted with the chubby little baby star. I ruffled his hair once more, neatened the models on the tray, and explained the doljabi to Greg and Cassandra.
"It's a Korean tradition called doljabi. You let a one-year-old pick an object, and whatever they grab is supposed to tell you something about their future."
"Oh, I've never heard of that. Sounds fun."
Greg answered with real interest; you could practically see him already picturing Sabrina's first birthday doljabi. Cassandra, who had always been drawn to anything vaguely astrological, looked just as intrigued.
"When you say fortune-telling—does each object have a meaning?"
"Yeah. Nothing especially mysterious, though—pretty straightforward. If the child grabs rice cake… well, I made bread instead—if they grab the bread, it means they'll always eat well. Money means they'll get rich. A pencil means they'll be good at studying. That kind of thing."
"So the idea is they pick something they'll use a lot in the future?"
"Maybe. Anyway."
I lifted Luca into my arms again, set the bubble gun on the table, and pointed at the little models I had carved over the past several nights.
"Luca, look here. Want to pick something you like?"
"…"
Luca gazed at the sudden array of objects with solemn care, as if he had actually understood me. Of course he hadn't. A pile of brand-new toys had simply appeared in front of him, so of course he was interested.
Everyone held their breath and watched the baby. Why was I getting nervous over something like this?
"Oh, he's reaching."
"Shh, keep it down."
Greg and Cassandra, both holding their breath just like me, whispered at each other. And under all those watching eyes, the thing Luca's hand closed around was—
"It's the bread!"
"…It's the bread."
It was the bread…
"Hmm…"
Cassandra's mouth twitched. She clearly wanted to say something and was fighting not to laugh. Greg, however, made no such effort.
"Come on, Luca. We already know you eat well without you grabbing the bread."
I shot him a wordless glare. Luca, completely unbothered by whatever Greg was saying, was busy examining the bread in his hand. Cassandra added,
"No, wait—maybe it means he'll become a pastry chef?"
"Ah, that actually makes sense."
Just then Luca looked up and reached out again.
"Oh, he's picking something else!"
Everyone held their breath once more and followed the baby's small hand. The next thing Luca grabbed was—
"Oh, looks like an astronaut?"
"No… I don't think so?"
Luca's hand drifted toward the spaceship, hesitated, then slid sideways and closed firmly around a different object.
"It's the microphone! What's a microphone mean—a singer?"
"Doesn't have to be a singer. Maybe anything in broadcasting?"
The two of them, somehow more excited than I was, traded theories with relish. And then a perfectly plausible career path floated into my own head.
Is our baby going to be a mukbang YouTuber…?
Given his natural talent for eating and the fact that his dad was a YouTuber, it was the easiest future to imagine.
"Still, if you're trying to read a whole future from symbolic objects, the selection feels pretty limited."
"True. But it was fun, so that counts for something, right?"
Greg poked Luca's cheek while the boy studied the microphone and the bread with deep concentration. Luca scowled and shoved Greg's hand away.
"Hey, Luca, why are you always so cold to me? You weren't like this when you were three months old."
Greg looked genuinely wounded. Luca ignored him completely, tossed the objects back onto the table, and pointed a finger at the balloons hanging on the wall.
"Bwa!"
"Yeah, you've been eyeing those balloons for a while, huh?"
"Whoa, whoa—we'll pop those later. Play with this first."
Apparently desperate to keep the wall balloons intact a little longer, Greg brought over a PVC balloon bigger than a beach ball and held it out in front of the child. Fascinated by the balloon-inside-a-balloon, Luca's attention was successfully stolen exactly as Greg intended.
"Let's put them in the playroom."
It was about time the adults got to work. Greg nodded and tossed every PVC balloon decorating the living room into the middle of the playroom. Cassandra collected the ones stuck to the ceiling one by one and fed them into the room as well.
Reni, now clutching the microphone Luca had discarded, stretched both arms from his chair, asking to be put down.
"Daddy! Me too, me too!"
I scooped him up with my free arm and set both boys down at the playroom door. Reni dashed straight to the center of the room, grabbed a big balloon that held a gold star balloon inside it, and hugged it to his chest. Luca followed his big brother with one determined step—
Squeak!
—and froze solid on that very first footfall. He looked down at his own feet. Because I had been carrying him from the house all the way here, Luca seemed to have completely forgotten he was wearing shoes.
I hurried over and took both of the bewildered baby's hands.
"First time walking in shoes, huh, Luca?"
Holding my hands and staring at the floor for a long moment, Luca carefully took another step forward.
Squeak.
"…"
And freeze again. Ah, I was going to die of cuteness. The sensation of walking in shoes for the first time was strange enough; the sound his feet made with every step was stranger still.
Reni, hugging a balloon bigger than his own torso, came over and called out brightly,
"Luca, you like shoes?!"
"…"
Luca didn't answer. He just stared at his feet as if trying to bore holes through them. Cute as he was, I was ready to take the shoes off the second he seemed to hate them. Surprisingly, though, he never made a crying face. He simply seemed to be working hard to understand this brand-new phenomenon that had suddenly crashed into his one-year-old life.
Squeak. Squeak.
After a few more steps, a smile spread across Luca's face. He looked up at me and beamed. Luckily, he seemed to find it fun. I smiled right back at him.
The two boys started happily tossing balloons around. After watching for a moment, I quietly backed away to the table and sat down.
Aigoo. Exhausted.
I was sitting there staring into the middle distance with my mind emptied when Greg poured a cup of coffee, set it in front of me, and grinned.
"Jun, you look like your soul just left your body."
I accepted the coffee gratefully, took a sip, then pressed the warm mug to my forehead and muttered,
"…The kids seem happy, so I guess I'm okay for now."
Thinking about how many spare hours I had stolen outside of work over the past few days just for a few minutes of happiness today, I was freshly reminded how much I loved these children.
"You have no idea how hard I worked for just a few minutes. I would never have done something like this for anyone else."
I reached out, gathered the wooden bread Luca had tossed aside along with the other models, and returned them to the tray. Then I took a bite of a chocolate croissant. The sugar helped a little.
"I should start preparing for Reni's birthday little by little ahead of time."
Greg chuckled.
"We've still got more than half a year. Plenty of time."
Cassandra, however, wagged a finger at both of us as if we were missing the point.
"I think you two forgot—there's still one more left. Christmas. One of the most important events of the year."
Ah… right. Christmas.
I stared blankly into the air for a second, then declared with absolute resolve,
"Christmas is getting solved with money."
I would buy a Christmas tree. I would buy Christmas decorations. I would buy every last Christmas present—with money!
Greg clapped me on the shoulder.
"Beautiful! A rich boss dad really is the best!"
The end of the year was definitely more a season for spending time with family than for burning with work passion. December brought Christmas, of course, but the fourth Thursday of November also brought Thanksgiving. Coincidentally, this year Thanksgiving fell the very day after Luca's birthday.
Today the preschool was closed, our studio was closed—everyone was off. Reni, now free from preschool for two days in a row, slept in and then spent the morning still in pajamas, tumbling around on the sofa under a blanket with Luca.
Reni wormed his way toward Luca under the blanket, then suddenly flung it open with a weird noise.
"Wooooooo!"
"Kyaaak!"
"I'm the blanket monster! I'm gonna eat the baby!"
I had heard of monsters that lived under beds or in closets, but a blanket monster was a new one. Reni tossed the blanket over Luca and wrapped him tight; Luca thrashed hard, trying to escape. Still, it was nice that the two of them could entertain each other so well.
I shoved a stool over toward where they were playing, just in case anyone tumbled onto the floor, then sat on the floor beside it, tablet in hand, and started Christmas shopping at a leisurely pace.
…Until last year, there hadn't been that many people I needed to buy gifts for. Now there were the office folks, the people from the church, the neighbors on the first and second floors, the publishing people, people I had met through the broadcasts… The money was going to add up.
"…"
And yet, as I flipped through the pages, I felt surprisingly happy. I was glad there were so many people close enough to exchange Christmas gifts with, and glad that spending that kind of money no longer meant worrying about living expenses. Of course I still wasn't in a position to buy extravagantly expensive presents or waste money. But having the room to share small gifts and laugh together—how grateful I was for that.
The fact that the Manito App would return double the points was just a bonus.
Writing names on a memo pad of people I wanted to give gifts to, and fretting over what to get each of them—I was learning for the first time how fun and happy a task that could be.
"Hmm…"
As I tapped at the tablet screen in deep consideration, Reni poked his head out from under the blanket and asked,
"Daddyyy, what are you doing?"
"Just thinking about whether I should get Father an ice maker for the middle of winter."