For four days after that workshop my leg muscles hurt so much that I needed to push myself by the arms of my chair in order to stand up. The workshop was a wonderful experience, but I was realistic about the commitment of time and effort (and pain) it would take to really study Aikido and was slow to make that commitment. I promised myself that I would go to classes at least twice a week for two months to see if I really wanted to do it. Sensei went back to Florida, and most nights there were only five of us to practice. I remember one night there were only two of us.

With Sensei gone, Carl or Megan led the classes. By the technical standards I have now, they were not very accomplished. They hadn't even reached dan (black belt) level. But they knew more than I did and they offered each of us everything that they had. They became my friends.

I kept my promise, though barely. I went to at least two classes every week.

When I had been practicing for about nine months Sensei moved to Washington. There were not enough Aikido students here to support him, so he lived like a Bohemian. I was neither committed enough to Aikido nor close enough to him personally to feel responsible when he first arrived. Still, because there were so few of us, I had a lot of day to day contact with him. I continued to practice. I got to see Sensei as a sensei and I thought--and I still think--that he is one of the finest teachers of anything that I have ever seen. I got to see him as a person, and I found that I liked and respected him. There was a succession of apartments for Sensei, seminars to set up, Aikido visitors to entertain, and the business of business for the dojo. I was a part of all of it. My Aikido got better in the succession of small advances in technique and insight that make progress in any creative art. In time we incorporated the dojo. I wrote its charter and became the first secretary of the corporation.

From that time let me tell you only a few things.

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