Aihara

Ian Aihara is a 29 year old writer with a special gift. Lately he hasn't been himself due to his mother's passing.

William Qian

Aihara

My name is Ian Aihara.  It is the loving gift that my late mother graced me with prior to even my conception.  It is perhaps strange how prideful of it I am even to this day.  

“Ian...”  My editor, Markus, said whilst fidgeting with the corner of my manuscript.  “I don’t know what to tell you, besides that it feels like you’re losing your touch…”  He stared long and hard at the cover page before letting out a deep sigh and handing it back to me.  His eyes were hesitant as though he was being forced to contemplate the consequences of admonishing my work.  “I’m sorry…”  He finally said.

“Don’t be, Mark.  You’re just doing your job.”  I said while looking down at my manuscript.  It was devoid of any corrections and suggestions.

My name is Ian Aihara.  My late mother graced me with a gift that seemingly only one individual per generation within her ancestry could inherit.  The ability to read into a person’s life, instantaneously. Though, only through a single specific means.  ‘Willing’ eye contact I had dubbed the one condition restricting the use of my gift.
Markus, my editor, is the kind of guy who gets anxious when he has to deliver bad news.  He is ecstatic when it comes to delivering good, often inviting me out to drink in celebration.  He’s your typical easy-to-read kind of guy.  Over the years, I’ve become somewhat of a ‘pop sensation’ where my works have been described as ‘lifelike’ and ‘too real to be fiction’.  The one reason behind all this: I have objectively seen, heard, felt, and experienced more in this lifetime than anyone else.  Anyone, except my mother.

“I know my work has been getting worse, stale even.”  I returned my manuscript to its cover page.

“I-it’s not that Ian.”  Markus was rubbing his chin, piecing together what he wanted to tell me next.  “It lacks ‘heart.’  I don’t know how else to put it.”  He was staring directly at the manuscript now.  “I know your mother’s passing must’ve been really hard on you, but it’s like you’ve lost everything that made you great in these last several months.”

He was right.  I hadn’t been myself ever since my mother’s death.  Her last moments, her look of joy, when I granted her dying wish, was met by my drowning sense of guilt.  I had brought her nothing but pain in the time leading up to her departure from this world, but she was proud to have been my mother regardless of all that.  Before she left, I read her eyes for the last time.  She had far less to reveal to me this time, but her experiences were so much more overwhelmingly emotional this time around.  She passed before I thought that I had even gotten to experience it all.  The light in her had died in the middle of the instant, where I was reliving the last chapter of her life.  I couldn’t see all of it.  What I was left with, was an incomplete mural of my mother’s love.

“I understand.”  I said lifelessly.  “I’ll try and make it presentable by the deadline.”  I gently tucked my manuscript away in my brown leather satchel before saying goodbye to Markus.  I pulled my gloves out from the inside pocket of my trench coat and slipped them on before heading out.

My breath leaves a thick blanket of fog as it’s especially chilly tonight.  Winter is Winter I thought to myself.  Arizona is no exception.  Out of the three years that I’ve lived here, it’s only snowed outside the mountain areas once: this year.  I slowly made my way to my car.  The snow crunched under my feet with each step.  My mother loved the snow.  Until recently I never really thought much it.  My feelings towards it could be described as mild appreciation at best, as when I was little, sometimes my elementary school in Colorado would cancel school days.

I was with her, beside her hospital bed five years ago in Colorado.  She had been diagnosed with lymphatic cancer several months prior and had only recently begun chemotherapy due to my increasing frequency of nagging requests.  She wouldn’t have done so otherwise.  It was snowing heavily outside, but it wasn’t immediately obvious with the curtains closed.  Every now and then a gust of wind would blow the snow towards the building, making it thunder against the thin glass pane.

“The snow always reminded me of your love, Ian.” My mother smiled.  As she gestured for me to draw the curtains.

“What?  Cold, bitter, and only comes around once a year?”  I joked while pulling the left curtain to the side, letting in the greyed sunlight.  I could see her features a little more clearly now.  The chemotherapy had begun thinning her hair.  Her hands seemed larger than I had remembered them to be.

“No Ian.  Your love is pure, beautiful, but fleeting.”  She tightened her weak grip on my hand.  Her eyes were fixed on the window.

“It wouldn’t have been fleeting if  you had just divorced Dad sooner.”  I held onto her hand firmly.  She sighed before continuing her blank stare.

“That’s really selfish of you to say, Ian.”  She said softly.  “You’re forgetting how hard it was on your siblings.”  I could feel her grip loosening.  “They can’t see him the way you and I-”

“Even then-!”  I began.

“Even then what?!”  She interrupted back.  “Creating a rift in our family during a time that your siblings were still maturing could have easily caused them irreparable trauma.”  Her experience of having been a professional psychiatrist for two decades began seeping its way in through the cracks in the discussion.  “How could you be as heartless as your dad?”

My name is Ian Aihara.  After that day in my life, I quit my pursuit of earning a medical degree and practitioner's licence.  This was not to spite my mother for the last thing that had she said to me on that fateful day.  I quit because she was right.  My judgement had become blind to my own blatant hypocrisy.  Cognitive dissonance, they call it in psychology: the delusion that contradictory ideas can both peacefully remain apart of your idealisms.  I couldn’t be as selfless as my mother.  My weakness made me selfishly fault my father for all my own flaws.  No matter how horrible of a father he was, not taking responsibility for my own shortcomings is my greatest sin.

I grabbed the handle of my car door.  I’d only been walking for about a minute.  

I really had become more like my father over the years.  Growing up, I innocently seeked his approval and praise, as rare as it was. I tried because I had fooled myself into believing that it was something I had to strive for in order to receive his love.  

Eventually I discovered that he was incapable of feeling love towards anyone.  Anyone except my mother.

I opened the door and got into my car.  I laid my satchel in the passenger seat before shutting the door behind me.  

My father wasn’t a bad person at heart.  He just wasn’t a father.  Not in the literal sense, mind you.  His presence always brought a sense of unease to me.  He was not the role model that was fabled in stories.  The ones that would encourage sons or bring them warmth and life in times of dire straits.  He was overbearing and a domineering force in my life.  He set unreasonably high goals for me without showing any means of guiding me towards achieving them.  When I failed, I was met with admonishment at every single turn for weeks.  He held every single mistake against me and would remind me constantly.  “Remember how you got a D on your math test two years ago?! Or how you missed a homework assignment for your English class two months ago?”  

I placed my keys in the ignition and turned it.  The my car roared to life.  I tested the high beams of my headlights before pulling away from the sidewalk.  The light was weak because I had lazily chosen not to wipe any of the snow off.

When the light in my eyes had began to dim, I had become so numb to his words, that I no longer even processed them. They became no more than incoherent drivel.  I had closed off my heart from not only him, but the entire world.  Whether it was actually his fault became irrelevant.  His voice brought me nothing but shame.  I was ashamed to have to call him my Dad.

The sun had set no more than twenty minutes prior.  The world, like my emotional state, turned from a comforting and warm glow of red-orange to a greyed out shade of navy blue.  The long winter evening would take me again.  I pulled away from the sidewalk and began to drive home.

My penname is Iahara.  I am currently age twentynine.  I live alone in a single bedroom apartment with a strict no pets policy.  I majored in psychology as an undergraduate.  I went to medical school for two years but did not complete my education.  I am currently self-employed as a freelance writer.  I am widely praised for depicting and creating characters with detailed and lifelike stories yet are ultimately fictional.  I choose to not interact with my fans whatsoever.  Every member of my family is a fan of my work.  Especially my father.

My father…  He was the third person whose life I peered into when I discovered my gift.  The first two being, my younger sister Anne’s and my mother’s.  I was sixteen at the time that I discovered that my father... He didn’t…  He wanted to never raise children.  Why?  It was because he was afraid.  The thought that only person who had ever loved him would someday have to fragment her affection for him with others scared him to death.  I was incapable of sympathizing with him because of how tormented I had been all my life up until that point because of him.  

Then I felt it.  My nightmares for the first time.  Every time that my father made me feel like less, he was experiencing a twinge of some sort of sadistic euphoria.  He couldn’t get enough of it.  Experiencing those exact same memories from his perspective damaged me beyond repair.  I wanted to kick and scream until I couldn’t.  My sixteen year old heart didn’t ache.  It shattered that day.  I bottled away those emotions and let them rot and perpetually fester within me.  I felt nothing but contempt for my father from that day forward.  Those feelings ate away at me until I was empty.

I pulled to a stop at a red light.  I am selfish.  To the point where I no longer even deserve my mother’s love.  Shameful, my existence is.  My mother became a psychiatrist to fulfill her wishes of helping troubled minds and hearts.  I wanted to follow in her footsteps because I wanted to repent for troubling her whilst growing up.  Late into my life as an elementary schooler, I had already begun foolishly turning away her love.  It all started when my fourth grade teacher asked me why my last name was different from that of both my parents.  I couldn’t explain to them because I didn’t know the answer.  It wasn’t because I was adopted.  So I made up a reason.  “It’s because my Mom really loves me.”  It was then that all my classmates and so called ‘friends’ had dubbed me as Mama’s Boy.  When I told my father, he left the room and scorned my mother for smothering me for so many years.  It was the first time that he hadn’t blamed me for one of my own problems.  A sense of relief had washed over my eleven year old self.  One that I shouldn’t have been feeling but couldn’t help doing so.  My mother came from the other room and studied my eyes before relinquishing her affectionate clasp on my life.  Ever since then, I had grown distant from my beloved mother in a misguided attempt at becoming ‘normal.’

When I was fifteen years old, there was this assignment that my English teacher had given to the class.  It was a research project where I was to discover the origins and meanings behind my own name.  It was pretty much as simple as it gets in terms of homework.  I turned to my mother for help for the first time in ages.  She was the one who had lovingly given it to me.  She explained to me delicately that my first name, Ian, came from Scottish origins and meant, “The gift from the gods.” It was a rather grandeur concept that made me feel incredibly special at the time.  But then she explained to me that the truly special part of my name was my surname.

Suddenly the world around me went white.  A sharp ringing was going through both ears and a sharp pain had shot through my left shoulder.  I couldn’t breathe.  Something or someone had slammed into the back of my car and set off my air bags.  In a matter of seconds, the bags deflated and I watched as an E-Class Model of a Mercedes-Benz drove off with the front severely damaged.  The traffic signal still read green.  The fault fell on both of us.  I had absentmindedly remained stationary despite the light having already turned green for some time, and they had negligently ran into me.  The fault was surely, unequal but they should not have felt the need to run.   So why did they?

I was in a half daze before I fully realized the gravity of the situation.  Suddenly another car shot past me on the right.  I couldn’t stay here.  I pulled my car to the side of the road before reaching for my cellphone.  The pain blindingly shot through my entire left side when I attempted to move my left arm.  With my right hand, I felt the afflicted areas.  The seatbelt had not only dislocated my shoulder, but also slightly fractured two of my ribs.  It it was somewhat painful to breathe.  I reassured myself that I was only suffering from minor internal bleeding and wouldn’t be in any need to rush to the hospital.  I let my heart rate subside before assessing the situation in greater detail.

Whoever was driving that E-Class Mercedes-Benz was definitely affluent enough to deal with the damages and repairs.  Otherwise they wouldn’t drive a luxury car of the E-Class quality.  So why did they decide that a hit-and-run was necessary?  Was there some sort of emergency that was worth the risk of time behind bars?  I didn’t give it much further thought.  I’d have to somehow explain the hit-and-run situation to my insurance company later.

I attempted to set my shoulder back in place.  I winced as it only became harder and increasingly frustrating after each failed attempt.  My heartrate was once again rapid and I had begun sweating from the pain.  My concentration was interrupted by a tapping on my window.  

It was an elderly woman who had a note in one hand.  She was dressed from head to toe in heavy down clothing.  I rolled down my window.

“My husband and I tailed the person who hit you so that we could get their licence plate number for you.  We’re terribly sorry that you have to go through all this, but we figured that this was the least that we could do to help out.”  They had approached and parked behind me while I was trying to fix my shoulder.  She carefully handed me the note before waving and returning to her husband.  As they drove off I looked down.  I pushed the collapsed airbag back into my steering wheel.  It would have to be replaced at some point in the future.  With gloves still on, I held the note to the light with my right hand.  The letters and numbers were cleanly written in pen.  I reached to my left trenchcoat pocket with my right hand and clumsily pulled out my cellphone.  The pain in my left side remained.  I dialed nine-one-one.  There was a female voice on the other end.  I gave her my contact information and location then explained the situation.  After all was said and done, I waited patiently for the authorities to arrive.  

My name is Ian Aihara.  I was born on the twenty-second of February in 1987.   I did not inherit my father’s surname.  In nearly all traditional Asian families’, or any family really, it’s the father’s family name that is passed onto their children.  My mother, upon marrying had made a set in stone decision to transfer her maiden name, Aihara, to her first born disregarding such traditions.  Aihara roughly translates to “Original love” in Japanese.  I am unique in the sense that I am to carry our family’s legacy.

I had assumed that the legacy was the secret gift that I had awakened at the age of sixteen, but I hadn’t discovered the truth until the fateful day came where my mother’s summoned me to her death bed for her last wish.  It was not for either of my younger siblings, just me.

A police car pulled up and parked behind me.  The snow had picked up by now but I rolled down my window to speak to him anyways.

“Hello sir.  You must be Mr. Aihara who called in to report an accident.  Am I correct?”  The police officer was a tall and lean Hispanic man with a beard that stretched across his entire jawline.  He had his Maricopa County Sheriff’s Badge secured to his right breast pocket and a patch that distinguished the same very status sown to the left shoulder of his shirt.  He was dressed quite lightly despite it being evening already and snowing quite heavily.

“Yes Officer.”  I said while getting my driver’s licence from my satchel to show him.

“There’s no need for that sir.  I trust that you’re who you say that you are.”  He was shivering.  He must have absentmindedly forgotten to grab a coat before leaving the police station.

“I came to inform you that we’ve apprehended the perpetrator of the hit-and-run.  He is currently at Mayo Clinic Hospital and is being questioned there.  It is your decision now whether you’d like to press charges or not.”  His breath was forming large mists in the cold.

“Why is he being questioned there instead of at the police station?”  I asked curiously.  I looked up from my seat at the officer’s face.  It would be rather pointless to read into this officer’s life right now, I told myself.  My mother had always told me to use my gift sparingly.

“He said something about never forgiving himself if he missed the birth of his daughter.  Us cops aren’t heartless.  You know?”

“Take me to him.”  I said with absolute resolution.

“Huh?”  The officer seemed startled by how serious I had suddenly become.

“I’ll decide whether to press charges or not once I meet him.”  I said, easing off of my previously rigid tone.

The officer scratched his beard before nodding his head.  “Alright buddy.”  He finally said.

I slung my satchel over the opposite shoulder this time as my left arm hung painfully limp to my side.  I got out of my car and began to walk towards the police car.  The officer had a look of concern on his face.

“You were injured by the accident weren’t you?”  He said as I got into passenger seat of the police car.

“Yeah.  Damn airbag got me good.  Dislocated my shoulder.”  I laughed it off in front of him.

“I can help you with that if you’d like.”  He turned to me with a genuine look in his eyes.

“That would be much appreciated, sir.  Thank you.”  He pressed his left hand above my shoulder blade and the other on my shoulder.  I pushed against the door with my free arm.  He began to generously apply pressure.  I held my breath and gritted my teeth.  I was holding back my urge to cry out in pain.  Suddenly he shifted his whole body weight to his right hand and began to add immense amounts of pressure in short bursts.  My muscles were desperately screaming and fought back against the force that he was applying, weakening with each press.  Then I felt it.  My dislocated shoulder popped back into place.  The incredibly sore pain remained but at the very least my main grievance had turned to relief.

“Whew!  Alright!  Let’s get going!”  The officer said.  He was short of breath and panting.  He turned the keys in the ignition of his car before looking back over to me.

“What’s your name sir?”  I asked the officer.  He was a genuinely friendly man, no older than thirty.  Probably around the same age as me.

“Todd Diaz.”  He said with a smile before turning his attention to the drive ahead of us.  Maybe I’ll write a character that resembles Todd Diaz one day I thought to myself.  I didn’t want to relive his life, as the more people I looked into, the more intrusive I felt.

My name is Ian Aihara.  Growing up, I idolized my mother.  She was a living legend and praised as the greatest physician of all time.  As a child, I didn’t understand the gravity of what any of that meant, but what I did know was that she cared for everyone of her patients like a mother would her child.  I was graced with the privilege of actually being her son and receiving her love in endless abundance.  I indulged in it.  Perhaps more so than I should have, but she spoiled me with it.  

When I was little I could hardly remember a waking moment where I wasn’t by my mother’s side.  On weekends I’d even opt to go with her to the Psychiatric clinic that she worked at just so that I wouldn’t be separated from her.  Her smile never wavered in front of me.  I naively thought that it was all because she was happy to have me as as her son.  She never stated the contrary.  Rather, she told me that it was a mother’s duty to love their child more than anyone else.

“Mayo Hospital.”  Todd announced as we pulled into the parking lot.

“Thanks again Todd.”  I said.  The pain had mostly subsided from my shoulder.  My ribs still ached readily.  As I exited the car and began walking towards the entrance of the hospital I noticed that Todd had decided to follow.

“Interested in the decision huh?”  I said to him playfully.

“You bet!  I know he caused you a lot of trouble.  I wouldn’t blame you if you pressed charges, but the way you reacted to the circumstances caught my attention.”  His eyes reflected the dim lights of the hospital entrance exceptionally well.  I refrained from reading into his life as I knew I’d be using my gift on someone else soon enough.  There were two other police cars in the parking lot.

“You must be here to see the husband of the patient residing in room 222.”  The woman working at the clerical desk said.  

I nodded, assuming that Todd was the reason she made that inquiry.  “Right this way.”  She led us up a flight of stairs to the third floor before showing us to a room labeled with the number 222.  Todd waited outside beside the door as I went in.

Inside was a brightly lit white room.  It reminded me of all the times I had visited my mother in the years leading up to her departure.  An aching yet ultimately warming feeling.  In one corner sat two officers.  In the other was a bed with a woman lying comfortably with sheets pulled up to her waist.  Beside her, stood a man who was unmistakably her husband.  He was rocking a baby gently back and forth in his arms.  For a moment I felt a tad jealous of the child that he was holding, but it quickly subsided when I found myself unconsciously beginning to smile.

One of the officers immediately got out of his seat to greet me.  “Officer Brown.”  He said, extending his arm.  I took my right glove off before extending my arm in return.

“Aihara.  Ian Aihara.”  I said before turning my attention to the husband.

He gently placed the child in his wife’s arms before approaching me.  He clasped both my hands and began apologizing profusely restating what I had already found out from Todd.  He was a middle aged man in his early to mid fifties.  I could tell that he was still going strong as his hair hadn’t even begun to grey.  He was dressed in formal business attire but his clothes had become crooked most likely from the accident.  He had a blood stain that trailed on his tie that came to a stop on his trousers.

I stopped him.  “You’re injured, sir.  Aren’t you?”  Officer Brown’s partner suddenly lit up with curiosity.  “Here, let me see what’s wrong.”  I reached into my satchel for my flashlight keychain.

“I’m sorry.  You must’ve been injured too-”  I held my hand up to stop him.  I aimed the flashlight indirectly at his face, towards where his hairline began.  I gestured with my finger for him to stare at the middle of my necktie.  When I shone the weak beam he squinted.  I turned off the light and returned it to my satchel.  Next I grasped his hand gently.  It was trembling uncontrollably even when I gripped it.

I began to feel him, searching for broken bones, sprains, and/or torn ligaments.  He had a fractured collarbone and a broken nose.  His left temple had received bruising as well.  A nurse had walked in wide-eyed while I was making my assessment.  I turned to her.
“This man has received a concussion and has a fractured collar bone.  His nose is broken and he has bruising in several areas that include his left temple and his lower middle back.”  I turned back to the husband.  “Please seek help immediately.”

“But my daughter-”  The man began.

“I have her taken care of.”  His wife beamed from her bed.  She smiled in our direction approvingly.  Her husband reluctantly followed the nurse out of the room.

I approached the wife.  Her smile was unwavering.  She was already convinced that I was a good person.  A sense of guilt trickled from the back of my neck, but it subsided when I peered into her eyes.

My name is Ian Aihara.  This woman’s name used to be Alejandra Hernandez.  She’s lived in Arizona all her life.  She and her husband come from modest backgrounds.  Both of the lower middle class.  Her favorite food is her late grandmother’s homemade tamales. Her favorite genre of music is classical.  When she was little she desperately wanted to learn to play the piano but her family could not afford to purchase one at the time.  Instead she learned to sing.  She met her husband as childhood friends whom of which grew closer-  I skipped to the pinnacles of their emotional torrential.  Her coming of age ceremony and their wedding had both passed in a flash.  But their son’s birth did not.

When their first son had been born.  It was spring and her husband had stayed with her for three days and nights straight in anticipation for their first child.  The look in his eyes was lively and full of excitement despite how much of a physical toll sleeping in an uncomfortable bedside chair had been.  Alejandra warned her husband, Fernando, that “anytime this week” could have even meant on the seventh day.  He smiled back at her before saying,  “I told my boss that I’d be taking this entire week off.”  He placed his hand tenderly on Alejandra’s belly.  “I wouldn’t miss his birth even if it killed me.”  I skipped to the next point of interest as her memories here had begun to overwhelm me.

It was seven loving years that she gave to her first son before she had realized that he had shown the first signs of freeing himself from her ideation.  It was shortly after she had sent her son on an errand to buy milk and eggs from the local convenience store.  She had given him five dollars, two more than he needed to make the purchase.  She expected him to return with the milk and eggs along with the change.  When he came home with only the milk and eggs she scolded him for irresponsibly spending the change on candy.  Her son, on the verge of tears, denied having done so but was unable to come up with an alibi for the missing money.  Alejandra could tell that her son had lied to her.  She could see the guilt in his eyes.  Even so, she tenderly said to her son, “Okay.  I trust you okay?  I’m sorry for thinking that you were being a bad boy.”  I had seen a memories like this before.  They were similar to those of my very own mother.  For the first time ever, I paused.

I was staring blankly at Alejandra’s face.  She did not say anything as though she was aware of my gift.  She studied my face before saying.  “You know, I think my son is about your age.  He’s a good boy and I think you two would get along just fine.”  Her daughter had begun babbling.  Alejandra chuckled softly as she lovingly cradled her daughter.  She then returned her gaze to me, as though she were inviting me to experience the rest.  

The memories were still fresh, from no longer than an hour ago.  Her husband, Fernando, had stormed into room with dried blood trailing from his nose to his chin.  He was completely out of breath.  He must of ran from the parking lot and up the stairs, both Alejandra and I thought.

“Am I too late?!”  He barely managed to say in between wheezing breaths.  Alejandra looked to him before showing him their newborn daughter that she was cradling under her covers.

“No you’re just in time, but you missed the best part.”  She smiled towards him.

“Which was?”  He was confused.

“The part where I was screaming and crying with the doctors and nurses yelling PUSH!”  She beamed at him.  Fernando is a lucky man, I thought to myself.

Shortly after, police sirens could be heard approaching.  I stopped the reading there.  Alejandra’s post marital name is Alejandra Diaz.

Todd walked in.  I gave him somewhat of an annoyed look.

“Ah so you found out huh?”  He said to me rather slyly.

“Are you the reason that he wasn’t worried about facing the consequences of hit-and-run?”  My tone was rather abrasive.

“Oh heavens no.”  Todd stepped back and began chuckling.  “My Dad’s just a one-of-a-kind dedicated father.  Sometimes to the point of sheer stupidity.  What happened today kind of goes to show.”  The wasn’t a doubt in my mind that what he had just said was absolutely genuine.  I didn’t need to use my gift to know.  I smiled to Todd.
I patted his shoulder.  “Your parents are amazing.  Both of them.  Let your dad know that I won’t be pressing charges and that we can settle our insurance claims privately.  Make sure he eats well and has plenty of fluids.  I doubt his injuries would need him to be hospitalized.”  With that said, I left the room.

I made my way to the parking lot before realizing that my car was still parked on the side of the road a few miles away.  Todd came up to me quietly.  “Need a lift, Buddy?”  I wouldn’t mind sharing a drink with him sometime.

My name is Ian Aihara.  In the months leading up to my mother’s death, she had developed pancreatic cancer, a terminal disease, on top of her pre-existing lymphatic cancer.  In her last moments, my mother’s parting words to me were, “Learn to love yourself as much as I love you.”  She welcomed my gaze with the eyes of a proud mother.  At the time I adamantly believed that she was asking for the impossible, but now...  Now I see otherwise.  I had relived my mother’s entire life in her last moments.  Every last thing that she wanted to say to me, her beloved but misguided son, had finally heard her.  I had tucked away what I didn’t want to hear nor experience originally, but now I was ready.

“Please stop being so hard on your father, Ian.”  She began.  “You were my mistake after all.  Not his.”  She was confident in her conviction.  “But you’re also my gift of love to this world, Ian.”  My memories of her had suddenly become distant yet near.  “You, and you alone, now carry the Aihara legacy.”  The trail of her experiences and memories ended there.  These were her true feelings that I had locked away that I had not been previously ready to embrace.

A tear streamed from my right eye before leaping from my nose to the trodden snow below.  “I’ll  book a flight tonight to see Dad, Mom.  But I don’t have to like Dad right?...”  One after the other, my tears bore holes in the snow.  “I just have to love him.  Right?”  I wiped away my tears with my left palm.

The deafening silence was the only answer that I needed.  Once again, my heart began to beat to the rhythm of my emotions.

My name is Ian Aihara.  I learned a very valuable lesson from my late mother.  It is impossible to make everyone perfectly happy, but it is not impossible to love everyone.  I am my mother’s gift of original love to this world.  She… She will forever be my goddess.

Author's Note

This was a story that I was going to tell later down the line, but a fellow writer inspired me to bring it out sooner. In its current state it still needs a lot of polishing.

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

A very long and worthwhile story.
"My name is Ian Aihara. I learned a very valuable lesson from my late mother. It is impossible to make everyone perfectly happy, but it is not impossible to love everyone. I am my mother’s gift of original love to this world. She… She will forever be my goddess."
I liked the ending a lot. We learn from our elders. Thank you for sharing the story.
Coyote