From the Desk of Son of Mama-gon,

For those of you who read the first installment, "The Birth of Mama-gon," I am sure that some of you have some interesting mental pictures. In fact, I would love to see some of these pictures since I am looking for some inspiration for a logo or masthead for these articles. If you have any contributions, please proceed to the submission box at the end of the article.
My mother perused the first draft of that first article, and began to bat me on the head with it.
"Hei! Gojira, huh. Shiku-sho! I'll show you Mama-gon's wrath!" she said over the phone.
"Wap! Wap!" went my manuscript against the receiver.
All of which, of course, prompted an immediate re-write.
Upon re-reading the finished article, I will admit that I was pleased with its result and so, happily and somewhat tearfully, was my mother.
However, there are still some elements of which I am dissatisfied with. One questionable element would be that I painted a rather one-sided portrait of my mother. The other element would be that I drew an overly humorous, somewhat caricature as that is what I promised to deliver to my editors.
So, to satisfy these concerns, I've decided to address them with yet another borrowed, popular, cinematic convention-"THE PRE-QUEL!"

So, here begins,

From the outset of the first article, I imagine that some of you pictured a grammarian, Tasmanian Devil. If you thought something like this, you've received an accurate impression of one half of my mother.

She was certainly my most exacting taskmaster. Just as millions of Japanese children conceived of their mothers as Jailer/Dragons, I had my own battery of fantastic conceptions.

You might have envisioned an ominous figure, silhouetted by the maternal passions that flamed behind it. Indeed, Mama-gon sometimes burned and seethed with an intensity that matched any raving zealot's.

Maybe, in a dream, you conceived of a gruesome, female counterpart to Captain Ahab. I have. Her parental course never wavered; even at the most fearsome outrage--the most treacherous current of my own, darkly, adolescent oceans.

Under her constant pressure, my defensive conceits burnt away and true confidences were forged. She scourged my shortcomings by lecturing to my impatience, curbing my gluttony, checking my carelessness with her vigilance.

She pulled back these trappings and revealed to me talents that I had no awareness of. She showed me my gift for communication.

She laid out story after story until I saw the subtly patterned flow of narratives. She scrolled out lists of words to add their strange and powerful brocade to my speech. All this she did while teaching me other ways the world thought to itself: the languages of Math, Science, Music, and Art.

Most importantly, my mother brought me (sometimes, kicking and screaming) to the understanding that, to unearth and mine my talents, I must labor oftentimes in darkness and always with earnest and taxing care.

And above all else, she taught me that one word, "Labor," was a powerful and magical word because it would provide for me. Understanding this word would allow me access to things beyond what luck and destiny had in store for me, beyond what she would give me, beyond even what she would dream for me.

Even, now as I read this tribute to her, I still feel that I sell her short. My mother is much more that this robust, maternal warrior that I've paint her to be.

Actually, the first time I saw my mother as anything else but my guardian and parent came when I was going through some photographs taken years ago, but never really closely looked at.

My father took the photo, so I guess credit to this new vision of my mother goes to him. They had flown to Portland, Oregon to see my brother's graduation from Reed College.

Days before the ceremonies, the city began to celebrate its Rose Festival. Since my mother's favorite flowers were on such a grand display, they planned to visit the famous gardens at Washington to tour the blooming spectacle.

During the bustling tour, my mother and father got away long enough to take this epiphanal photo.

My father framed his composition with my mother towards the right corner, posing her on the lawn before the upsweep of a hillside bed.

His goal in all vacation pictures was to contain all the "essential," aesthetic, environmental elements of the locale. In this case, he wished to capture the grand, deciduous forests and the multitudes of blush, salmon, vermilion, saffron, and carmine colored blooms.

We, as my mother was in this particular photo, were most often employed as scale markers, both sizing and autographing the natural grandeur with our tiny family's presence.

Nevertheless, my mother stood out in the foreground against the towering stakes of live pine and against the sea of roses that vibrated with large red heads, blooming in wave after crimson wave.

Maybe it was the yellow dress she wore. It seemed to be woven in a vibrant, honey bee yellow culled from the soft pollen of the roses' stamens.

Maybe, it was the petal-ness of her skin--a subtle blush on the cream of her face that slipped into a red piqued smile.

Or was it the wave of her thick, dark hair, tamed and coifed a la mode in a tapered wedge.

Whatever it was, she became the pictures focus.

For me, anyway.

The beds of roses extended where her feet touched the ground. Each flowering head mirrored hers, rippling outward like an exquisite reflection pool.

And each flowering head had its own unique aspect--a change of hue, a lilt of petal, a tight cup of buds or an opening at full flower. This was remarkable to me, but not to see my mother's beauty.

I always knew she was lovely.

This was about my waking to the many different facets of beauty spun from the woman I thought I was so familiar with. And as I now understand, each facet could be a different identity.

My mother, the parent and teacher, the guardian and tyrant, could be the student, the artist, a future expert and perpetual beginner. As we all are.

And this brings us to the discussion of the actual subject of this series of articles. She is an accomplished parent, with nothing more to prove in this arena.

So now, the other selves of her identity, the ones left behind to pursue parental and spousal challenges, are the ones that cry out for nurturing.

This is where I, once her child, re-enters as the parent. Somewhat like those soap-opera plot lines, where the 5 year old goes off to boarding school in one episode to return next season, all too conveniently as the 20 year old vamp.

Well, not just like that, I hope.

Anyway, this brings us back to where I left off in the first article.

We await the recount of her adventures and we wait to laugh and fret over her progress.

We wait up for her safe return from night class.

We delight at her humorous wrestling with the evil word processor.

We laugh with her no nonsense, but sweetly skewed evaluations of classmates.

"Parent the parent," as I have said before and will probably chant to myself over and over and over again.