Happy Heart
"I thought of how a couple of months earlier my mother had told my brothers and me about our 'stars' -the word she used for the personality traits she thought would make our lives easier. One night, as she and I were sitting looking over a grove of plum trees, she lowered her voice, as if she had a great secret, and said she had finally figured out what my star was, what I had that would ease my way through the future. It wasn't Peter's alertness, or Walker's concentration, or Ben's self-assurance. But I had a happy heart-my birthright, she said. I sat leaning my head against her shoulder, hoping that someday my happy heart would take me to the right places, get me the right jobs, let me love the right man. Then I wondered whether her mother had ever told her that she had a happy heart, and I asked her the same question I asked my father now: `Did you just make a wish, or a promise?' " (Cynthia Kadohata, The Floating World)
