KAYA PUSHES A BIG BUTTON

At the nursery school Kaya has been attending for some months now (she just turned 4), they had a birthday party for all the kids in the class who had been born in the month of January, Kaya among them.

All the kids in the nursery and all their mothers attended the festivities, part of which comprised the kids getting up on stage in front of the audience of young mothers and singing kiddy songs and dancing kiddy dances, then individually answering such questions as “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

To this question, all the kids gave answers like “I want to be Doraemon” (favorite kiddy cartoon character), or “I want to be the girlfriend of AnpanMan” (ditto), everyone having ambitions to be with and in the world of their favorite imaginary characters.

That is, until they came to Kaya, who when asked that question said in a loud and clear voice: “When I grow up I want to be a beautiful mother, just like my mother is.” Kasumi and all the other attending mothers dissolved collectively into one weepy mass; order was not restored for some time.