A Portrait, Motohiro, A Good Boy

Motohiro, A Good Boy.

Motohiro, good boy, sits by his games while a phone rings.
The vibrations take him back to when he was three.
Though now 18, he can remember it all,
And the days of recklessness,
And the headstrong fights of a boy and his father.

The strictness he could never understand, and the phone rings on.
The breaking point he stared at when his books flew through the air
Onto the street below.

The pain. The hurt. The anger. The fight. The fight that continued and continued.

He just didn’t understand the wrath of his father.
Was it wrath?

…and the phone rings on.

“Dear boy. Dear boy. Do not be angry with your father,”
His mother said over and over.
Oh he understood little then. Young men understand little of their mother’s wisdom when they are angry.
He understood so little.
Immaturity too strong, overwhelming the calming advice of a mother,
And the phone rings on.

The restricted time of games,
The restricted time of joy,
The constant reminder of work,
The constant reminder of obedience,
And the phone rings on.

“Dear boy, don’t be angry,”
And the phone rings on.

Quarrel and quarrel and the boy, now 12, looks in his father’s angry eyes,
But is it anger in his eyes?
Is that anger Motohiro sees, or something greater?
The loud voice may speak a wiser language that a 12 year old cannot understand.
A pity perhaps? A pain? A sorrow? A disease?
…and the phone rings on sending vibrations through an 18 year old body about to realize the truth of a man he battled for 15 confusing years because although there was battle, there was also peace.
There was the lightness of peace in a youth privileged to eat and sleep in comfort.
There was the peace of security and rest after the demands were met.
The demands? Did his father demand anything extreme of Motohiro?

Study, yes; work, yes; don’t fritter time away on the useless pleasures of your friends, yes; honour mother, yes; be strong, yes; be wise, yes; be patient, yes; read good books, yes; learn your culture, yes; don’t go to the water when the mountain is where wisdom is found, yes; follow the eagle not the sea gull, yes; help the weak, yes; avoid power, yes; honour the good, yes; and on and on and on and on, and Motohiro brooded.
…but were these the ravings of a tyrant?

The fight went on.
Mothers rarely stop the fights between brother and brother, father and son, father and brother or father and himself. Rarely.
Simple men and that battles in their souls.
The battles of ego.
The battles of regret.
The battles of men and men with never an end, but for Motohiro the battle would end and the phone rang on.

Six years later and I’m sitting in a classroom while a young man talks of his father.
He talks of the days of quarrelling.
He talks of the immaturity in his heart.
He talks of motherly wisdom unheeded.
He talks of a secret.
He tells of a mother not wanting her son growing up in melancholy.
He tells of strict rules, and flying books.
He tells of a model he cannot live up to.
And he tells of a phone call when he was eighteen,
And the death of a father dying after fifteen years of battling a disease inside of him.

Motohiro. A good boy.