The guests and relatives were all gathered in a banquet room and they sat in the round tables that were topped with flower vases and transparent drinking glasses.
The host placed my grandma in the cetre part of the room, so that everyone can view her.
[While the guests were sitting at the tables with comfortable pose, they(the banquet hosts) made her sit crossed legged on the wood floor, which my family later thought that this kind of a posture could have made her really uncomfortable. (Later, my grandma accepted that it was indeed, inconvenient position.)]
In the biography part, standing few steps away from my grandma with his non-properly working mic, the host briefly told about my grandma's life history, which she has led into, from her birth, childhood to marriage and life after marriage .
Very eloquently speaking, the host said,
"Having artsy gifts in dancing, Ms. Park (my grandma)'s nick name has said to be the princess of mirror ever since she was young, because she never gives up looking at the mirror. That much, she and mirror are inseparable. No doubt! I'm sure that's why she still maintains her fine look and her beauty."
The crowd burst into laughter.
Course, I was one of them.
What can I say other than the host's words were the verdicts!
Her pocket-fit-size mirror and comb always belong to her pocket she carries around.
She possesses them like a talisman and takes them out often. How often? It's probably enough to compare how frequent Kim Kardashian'd put a mirror in front of her before she goes into some swimsuit photo-shoots. That's how frequent my grandma sees herself and enjoys looking at herself and spends time on her look.
At the age of 23, I should be the one who be doing that, but all I'm telling about now is my eighty-years old grandma.
Many times, she recommends me to use her precious belongings.
"Want some mirror?"
It's like an addictive smoker saying "Want some cigarettes?" as she lits the cigarette and crams that into her mouth.
Isn't she 'something' for eighty years old grandma? haha
Wearing the pink, formal 'han-bok' custom dress, she looked weak, tired and even paler. Probably because of her particular attire and the amount of time she had to sit on that same spot with a same uncomfortable position.
And me.. watching her from the round table.. it felt weird.. that my grandma is already eighty years old.. and I'm already a grown-up person, who was raised by her for my entire life. 'She approached... eighty....? Really...?' I thought.
Yes, I couldn't and still can't believe she's in that age.. the age people usually think it's so~~ immensely~~ old.
Watching her from the distance, it became more clear that how precious she is to me.
Yes she did look tired, because of the circumstances at that moment, but at the same time, like the host said, she exactly looked like a prim princess of mirror in my eyes.
Anyhow.. when the host's mirror joke was ended, the guests were reacting hard by laughing hard, except.... one person...
What happened to my grandma? She was the only one, who wasn't reacting to her own story.
By that point, having a fanciful notion, she should have laughed out together or at least, given the guests either of a warm or shy smile with her right hand to her mouth, knowing that she was being looked at.
Instead, she gave people a boring look.
I tilted my head with a slightest wonder.
....
After a party, my family came back home with exhausted conditions.
I asked my grandma.
"Why didn't you laugh when the host was talking about you?"
With a high curiosity and her sparkling eyes, she asked me back.
"He was talking about me? What did he say about me??"
Aha.
"What did you hear, grandma~~?" I said to her in a police detective kind-of-a tone that is about interrogate the suspect (for incapacity of hearing..? haha lol)
"Nothing....?" she replied like an innocent girl.
By the way, it's been several years that her ears have been like that.
It's a common scene for my family and relatives to say same things over and over again.
Sometimes.. she even needs us to shout at her.
The average minimum number of the talk my family has to do in order to pass on words to her is three or four times. After we conveyed the words we tried to convey, we were often fatigued and our energies were literally depleted.
There were many times she took an advantage over her auditory problems. When she thinks something's unfavorable to her situations, she blames her hearing problems or she says she committed such such kinds of mistakes, 'because of' her ears. Not a good habit, grandma!
Nowadays.. instead of doing all that, I tend to press my mouth to her sideburns and deliver her a message. lol
At the moment. All I wanted to do was... shouting in her ears, so she can hear.
"You are always my lovely princess!"
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| Delicious food I ate at the celebration. |
