My father was the third generation of being an only one son. When he married, grandma, Lee Buksul yi, wished them a lot of sons, so that they could continue to their patriarchal inheritance and hold the ancestral rites. My parents had only two daughters till granmother's death. I used to hear her lamenting that after her death she wouldn't know where to find her ancestral table, since she had no grandson. It's interesting to think about the relation of the shape of bowls and tombs in Korea.
Korean tombs look like bowls place upside down.
Because I am the younger one, I had to hear her regrets of not having grandsons. I seriously thought that if I could keep it well, it could become part of my body. I was around 5 years old, and at that time I really wanted to fulfill my grand mother's wish. It's still so vivid in my memory of the moment when I confessed this conspiracy to my mother, and grandmother. I used to see my grandmother praying in front of the tree.