Playing with the Big Boys

A little more than halfway through third kyu, and suddenly everything is new again. Footwork, body angles, where the hands go—I am revisiting the minor details of these movements, nitpicking to get them right. In regular keiko, sandwiched in the middle at lineup between beginners and yudansha, I had grown accustomed to training with students near my rank or lower, our pace steady as we work through and try to understand the techniques. I become the middle child, surrounded by big brothers and little sisters, for the most part overlooked and ignored.

Sensei writes me an email: “So when are you going to attend Advanced Training?” Held on Mondays and Fridays for half an hour after regular keiko, or Wednesdays for the full hour, Advanced Training is something I’ve always sat on the sidelines to observe since I joined the dojo. There are those students who first join the sessions and struggle with the newness and intensity, but for the most part, it consists of yudansha going at each other at full speed and strength. Sometimes, there is advanced weapon techniques, including take-aways like jo- and tachi-dori. Often, it includes lessons on reversals, how to morph ikkyo omote into sankyo ura, or yonkyo into a kokyu-ho throw. Therefore, it is a joy to watch, and a pleasure for the senses to see aikido at a natural pace, practiced by partners who look like they dance through the techniques with fluidity and simplicity.

I write Sensei back: “I know I’m overdue to join the advanced sessions; I am in transition after having just moved houses; work has picked up; life got busy.” It’s all true, but I know a part of me is still hanging onto the desire to sit and watch. It’s easier to do when I wasn’t yet qualified and didn’t have the choice of joining in. But Sensei has a no-nonsense attitude and presses me about it when I next see her. So on the following Monday, I join the meager Advanced group and clap to bow in to training a second time that night. Pushed pass the comfortable safety of the sidelines, I find myself encompassed by the yudansha training circle. The entire, vast mat is our playground; with just the five of us, we are not packed tightly like a regular, busy keiko, watching where we throw and land, keeping our training partners falling within the borders of the mat, trying not to slide off during a pin. And yet the advanced techniques are more refined, the spirals tighter, the circular footwork confined and neat.

For the most part of that first session, I struggle. I hear loud ki-ai’s and grunts and heavy thwacks of bodies on the mat as the more advanced students are training on the opposite end. I throw my full strength into a technique, trying to move my partner. The pace gets quicker, and I use the precious moments when a new technique is being demonstrated to sit in seiza and catch my breath. Even ikkyo becomes more intricate as Sensei points out the angles, showing how my sloppy movements can leave me wide open for a good punch to the ribs. She reiterates ma-ai, committed attacks, the importance of using my hips.

Life is changing. I just moved into the first house I ever bought, started managing the small team I’ve built at work over the past few years, and began the Advanced Training sessions. I am moving past being the middle child, starting to play with the big boys. And because these challenges are part of what makes a fulfilling life, I step off the sidelines, take my plunge into the Advanced circle, and ready myself in hanmi to face the next thing that comes at me.

Unpacking

It’s quiet in the mornings, the only sounds the chirping of different varieties of birds nested in the nearby trees. Once in a while, the heat clicks before running its course through the house, or the refrigerator unloads another batch of ice down the chute. Not the sounds of deep bass pumping from oversize stereos of cars passing by, bad brakes squealing, or children yelling on their way to the nearby elementary school.

Cardboard boxes lay strewn about the house, containing remnants of my past: stuffed animals from my girlhood, files of paper from my academic years, trinkets and decorations waiting for a new home. They are coated with the dust of time, the thin motes and particles swirling like eddies in the sun-slanted air as I lift these items from their boxes. I unwrap the music boxes from my hasty newspaper padding, protection during transportation. Slowly, I wind up the switches. Nothing dredges up remembrances like music; the clear, sweet notes tinkle through the air, echoing off the empty walls of the house and tugging at the memories in my heart. There is “Love Me Tender” from the very first music box my mother gave me on my birthday when I was a little girl, with two magnetic swans circling on the mirrored surface. There is “Blue Danube” from a tiny music box I once bought myself. There is “Love Story,” a gift from a former date. And then there is “Younger Than Springtime,” a Christmas gift when Tung and I had first started going out.

One of my professors once told me, “Everyone, at one point or another in their lives, must get acquainted with loneliness.” I waft through the rooms of my new house, feeling homesick for my old one. As I put unboxed things in their rightful places, I feel the loneliness keenly, embracing it to come to terms with it, and to learn how to move on.

These smells that hover in some of the rooms, they are not mine. They are of some stranger’s past life, so familiar to her that she had grown accustomed and eventually did not notice them at all. I step into a room and am assaulted by the unfamiliarity of the scent. I gradually chase out these foreign smells with my subtle perfumes, and the steamy aroma of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, mousse, and lotions. I bask the kitchen that first weekend in the smell of sautéing vegetables and shrimp, of garlic browning in a pan of oil, of onions running clear before I throw on the ground beef—the comforting scents of home cooking.

Whereas before I became comfortable in the small sphere of my own room, now I have an entire house to tend. My world just got bigger. Every room calls for my attention, and I think of ways to furnish them, decorate them, maximize space. There’s much more to clean, but also more to enjoy. “Hello, house,” I think as I unpack, “I live here. I am your master now.” I’ve tamed the old roof, the broken fence, the burst pipe, the rotted window, the water reflux from the drainage clog. Now, I stack pans in cupboards, slide books on shelves, throw fresh sheets on the beds, and lay claim to what’s finally mine.