By this time I had reached shodan in Aikido and met and trained with several hundred other students of Aikido from all over the country. I didn't feel like any of the "serious" martial arts students that I had met. I certainly didn't have the dedication to training that I saw in some of them. Compare: Olympic hopefuls train long hours every day in figure skating and Aikido is at least as complex. Aikido has a vast technical tradition which will absorb four, six or more hours of physical training, repetitious drill, and careful attention every day--if you can give yourself to them. At most, I was training between five and ten hours every week. I had nearly full-time obligations as a consulting computer systems analyst, and I know from close observation that taking care of Sensei could be a full time job. I wasn't sure I wanted that much responsibility for Sensei. I wasn't sure I wanted to train harder in Aikido.

In addition, this is not Japan.

In the end I ignored those issues. The simpler equation was that Sensei needed me, and I was grateful to him for my Aikido. I was concerned about Taiji; I felt that he needed attention of a kind that his father couldn't give him. And though I never told her so, I was also concerned about Patty.

I haven't said much about Patty yet. It is hard to believe that we have known each other for ten years now. She met Sensei about two years before I did, in Florida where she was one of his students. I don't know much about it personally, but mutual friends have told me that you could keep a soap opera in scripts for six months by describing how they became lovers. Just before Sensei came to Washington, Patty was found unconscious at home. She was taken to the hospital, admitted and almost immediately she had major surgery to remove a cancer. They also took part of her stomach.

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