Yesterday was the first day of the lunar new year, The Year of the Pig. Happy New Year!
Some believe this is a "Golden Pig" year, which may only come around every 600 years and is an especially good year in which to have a baby and the prospect of wealth. To be fair, there's some debate as to whether or not it's really a "Golden Pig" year. Some believe that's just being said for commercialization purposes. But in general, any Year of the Pig is supposed to be a good year to have a baby.
We celebrated the new year with tuek guk, a traditional Korean new year's soup. If we were with Charles' family, we would bow to them and pay our respects.
Charles was also born in a Year of the Pig, so he and the baby will be the same sign which is supposed to be really good. He and I are almost exactly 4 years apart, which means we're also supposed to be an excellent match for each other. When we started dating and I first met his halmoni (grandmother), who was very conservative, everyone thought that she would really dislike me because I wasn't Korean. But when she learned that we were such a great match in terms of the horoscope (and probably also when I demonstrated that I was learning some Korean, I could write Korean and that I was learning Korean traditions), she was thrilled and wanted us to get engaged right away.
Anyway, of course we're over the moon to be having a baby at all. Knowing that halmoni, who died just a few months after I met her, would also be thrilled and smiling down on us makes it extra special. Instead of allowing myself to be bitter about the three years we spent unsuccessfully trying to conceive, and the money, energy and tears wasted on tests, medication, doctor's appointments and especially IVF, I'll think about her and about how fortunate we are to be having a baby in 2007.
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