Good morning! Good morning, and welcome to Sunday Griot once again. Summer is in full force here in Seattle, which means the temperature gets all the way up to 85 degrees sometimes. Honestly, I don’t know how we can take it.

Well, at any rate, grab a bagel and some coffee, and have a seat, and I shall tell you a story from Japan, about what might happen someday if the truth comes calling.

Once upon a time there was a man who had a five-year-old son. He loved his son very much, of course, and cared for him as any parent would.

One day when he had to leave his village on business, the man left his son in the care of a neighbor. The neighbor had a son just the same age, and the two of them were happy to have some time to spend together.

While the man was gone, the village was raided by bandits. The bandits burned, and looted, and pillaged, and siezed captives, as bandits do. They grabbed the man’s son and took him away with them. The boy’s playmate was not so lucky, for the bandits burned the neighbor’s house to the ground, and their entire family burned in the fire.

When the man returned to his village and saw what had happened, he was overcome with grief. In the ashes of his neighbor’s home he found a body, burned beyond recognition, that he took to be his son’s. He carried the body away, buried it, and mourned for his son every day thereafter.

About four years later the boy, left unattended by the bandits, managed to escape. He made his way back to the village, and though the memory of his past was dim, he remembered his father’s name and went looking for him.

His father had rebuilt his house, with a little shrine to his son, and was sitting quietly before the shrine when he heard a knock at the door. The father went to answer the door and saw a young boy standing there.

“Father?” the boy asked. “Is that you?”

The father looked at the boy, said “Go away,” and closed the door.

The boy knocked again, louder this time. “Father! I have returned!”

The father threw the door open and yelled at the boy. “Stop mocking me!” he said. “Isn’t my grief enough? Go away and stop causing me pain!” and closed the door again.

The boy pounded at the door, cried, yelled for his father, but was only met with threats and curses, and eventually silence. At last the boy turned and went away, never to return.