Childhood should be a happy time. I imagine that for most, it is. But there are always exceptions, and I am intimately familiar with one of those: my own.

My first memory is of a warm fire… I must have been only three years old or so. But while the age may be unclear, the image in my mind is not. I lay sprawled out on a throw made from some animal skin, which covered a floor of dirt. There was no furniture outside of a stool right next to the fireplace, where my mother sat tending to a bubbling pot suspended over the heat.

Mother… she was so pretty then. Her hair was dark as night - common for my people - and was tied neatly in a bun… a few strands would rebel and fall into her eyes, I will forever remember the way she would brush those hairs back, only to have them fall down again. When her eyes turned from supper to me, I could see those charcoal dots. A person’s eyes, Sho tradition tells us, reveal the story of their life. If you had seen those eyes change, as I had over the course of years, then you would be a steadfast believer. In that first memory, I saw her eyes shine with life. They floated happily from the pot to my face, then gazed into mine as a smile spread below them. “My strong boy,” she said in that soft, tender voice I would hear for only a short part of my life. “Be patient… it’s almost ready. If you are quiet and don’t cry, daddy will come home soon.” Then she turned back to the fire and began to hum a song.

Our warm fireplace.

But I never saw my father. Not for the first six years of my life. Instead I spent those years living with Mother. She was a good woman…she worked as a barmaid long into the night, yet made sure that I had food before she left. The days she spent taking care of me. I was her happiness, she said. “You look just like your father,” she would coo, and straighten my scruffy black hair.

“Tell me about Papa again,” I begged her. Never seeing my other parent, I was anxious to meet him.

At this she smiled - the kind of smile that makes the eyes squint a little as the cheeks move up a touch - and held my head in her hands. “You father is Kikuchi Hideki, a famous warrior.” She stroked my hair as she spoke. “He came to Beppu (our village) during an uprising, wearing the most magnificent yoroi anyone in these parts has ever seen. He was such a strong looking man: tall, commanding...” her eyes looked elsewhere at this,”... and he held a magnificent ivory yari. He must have prized that weapon over the whole world, because I never saw a soul touch it besides him. It was no surprise that in the months he was stationed here I would fall in love with him. Ah, but that is something you are too young to understand.” She let out a playful laugh at this and pinched my cheek.

“You are so like him, my darling. That same strong face...you have it.” She turned away a moment. “Oh, if only he would come back.”

“Where is he, Mama?”

“He’s... still in service, protecting us...yes, even now he is keeping the bad men away.” Every time she gave this kind of reason, her eyes would avert mine.