June 4, 2001

spring good-byes

And so I start my first bit of writing after months of silence by talking about death. 'Tis the season, and all that; more people seem to die during the spring and summer months than I ever remember during winter and autumn. Maybe it's just that it's more noticeable during the spring. We expect people to die -- old people to die -- during the winter months. It's sort of their season. Maybe that's it. Old people own the winter, middle-aged people the autumn, newly budded grown-ups the summer, and children the spring. Taxes have only April. Death has the rest of the year.

In April, right around the time that other people were cursing about taxes and I was filing for a big fat refund from the Federal Government, I finally caught up to a lifelong dream and signed up for Aikido. There was a Dojo around the corner, as it happened; beginner classes started a little before six, and advanced classes started at seven. Assuming I was able to find a breathing space at work, I could hop on my bike and pedal two blocks away, where the Aikido Dojo took up a tiny warehouse bordering the lot of the hockey rink where my company plays its league. After classes I could skip next door, where I could catch the game -- the Company is now second in its league, and quite impressive, really, now that they've stopped falling down so much -- or ride back to the gym at work, where I could shower and then catch up on anything that had happened during my absence.

It's hard taking up a new sport. It's hard fitting into any new environment. Aikido doesn't really believe in separating levels of classes; everybody proceeds at his or her own pace, which means that one is always in a class with people much better and much more practiced than one is. This is good, from a learningstandpoint. In theory, one doesn't have an ego to get in the way of the learning, anyway.

What little ego I did have, fortunately, was easily quashed by laughing at my own mistakes; there were plenty of those, and the complete strangers I was training with were all encouraging. One boy in particular was friendly, and grinned his way through training with me; I learned that his name was Corey, that he went to school in the area, and that he'd come from a different Dojo, originally. He was fourteen years old, and he regularly kicked my butt.

It got to be quite a joke with my friends. "So, did the fourteen-year old kick your ass again?" I didn't mind. It's a non-competitive sport, Aikido, and I learned a lot from this boy; we laughed together whilewe trained, making a little bubble of hilarity in the middle of serious-faced practitioners. Talking on the mat is not really encouraged, which makes it harder to get to know people and make friends. Corey and I would chat after practices in the parking lot, while he waited for his dad. "I'm bruised and broken," I sniffled after one day in the Dojo, answering to his usual, "How do you feel?"

"I feel like I've been reduced to my basic atomic components and spit out." I told him, reproachfully. He was the one who had done most of the reducing. "I'm too old for this."

"As long as you had fun," Corey said, happily. We grinned at each other like co-conspirators. We always had fun. That was the point.

He was one of the reasons I kept going back to Aikido; I would glance at the mat when I walked into the Dojo and see him warming up. Somewhere inside my chest, a little smile would curl, and I'd look forward to being able to practice with a smiling, open face meeting mine. The top of my head reached his chin, just about. He'd give me pointers as we practiced throws.

"You have to draw your partner into your shoulder by the back of the head, see?" He'd demonstrate, and suddenly I would be hugged into his shoulder with a face full of sleeve. From somewhere around his armpit, I would crack some joke -- "Corey, aren't you a bit young for me?" -- and he would giggle, and twitch, and before I knew it, I'd be staring at the ceiling and he'd be a lot taller.

He attempted to teach me how to tie my belt, around a uniform that used to belong to my father. There's room for two of me in that thing.

"If you wrap it around twice, and then thread it through here--"

"I tried that," I lied, because I couldn't figure out how to untie the belt after what I'd done to it in the dressing room. "It didn't work."

"--and tie the knot here," he plowed on, unheeding.

"I think I broke a nail. I could use toothpicks or something. Staple it together through the front?"

"...it should stay together. And then you tie it one last time, to make it a square knot." He finished, triumphant, and looked at my belt, which looked exactly the same. His face fell.

"I'll try it next time," I promised him. "Look. There's a hole in your knee."

I came in to the Dojo on Monday after training with him on Wednesday. His picture was on the shelf beneath the small shrine dedicated to the founder of Aikido; the teacher put us through a meditation exercise,"in honor of Corey, who left us last Thursday." Her eyes were bright and artificially shiny; she smiled around them. For half an hour, I darted surreptitious glances at the picture, thinking it would change. I waded through the class, pillowed by shock and a horrible urge to scoff.

Don't be ridiculous. He's only fourteen. I just saw him on Wednesday, and he was fine. He and his dad almost ran me over in their SUV. He waved at me through the windowshield and laughed.

I would have liked to see him become a man. He had a gift for sunshine. "I can see the future," I told him on Wednesday, as he taught me how to use a thumb to make a partner go in circles. "You'll have your ow n Dojo, and you'll be Master Corey."

No more chats in the parking lot. No more giggles over my overlarge gi. No more cheek-bursting grins towering over me from the ceiling.

I would have liked to see him become a man.