In 1984, “The Karate Kid” hit the theatres. I was a year older than Daniel,
the main character, and was just finishing final exams at SAIT. When I saw the
movie, I fell in love—not with Daniel, the slender dark-haired boy-next-door, but
with Miyagi, the Japanese WWII veteran, who lived a quiet life as a janitor.
Miyagi was humble and small, an unlikely hero.
Daniel was feisty and opinionated, an improbable champion.
A
few Saturdays ago, Laurèn, Yohannes and I retreated
to our cottage.
It
was a much-needed reprieve from a battle that we were not equipped to fight.
Faven had suddenly become a cursing Tasmanian
devil—leaving a splay of debris, and shattered relationships, in her wake.
For reasons that I could not understand I had become Bugs Bunny to her, and she could not be in my presence without
spinning out of control. I thought it best to stay out of her way. Moreover, it
was impossible to remain calm in the face of her chaotic attacks.
On
arrival at the cottage it was cold and snowy, but the bright sun tempted us
outside. We brought the skis up from the basement, and I gave Laurèn and
Yohannes a quick lesson on waxing. One set of skis had already been waxed, so
Yohannes first had to scrape the old wax off, whereas the skis that Laurèn was
preparing had never been used.
Daniel and Miyagi were drawn together because of unjust battle, but
would become connected through shared experience.
Daniel had grown up in Newark, New Jersey, a racially diverse city
that had been home to racial unrest since the riots in the late 1960’s. This,
together with loss of industry, political corruption, and mass exodus of the
white middle class, contributed to poverty. The move to Reseda, California
marked a new beginning for Daniel and his mother, after the death of his
father.
Reseda was one of the first suburbs in the San Fernando Valley and
took years to establish. Near the end of World War II, realtors swooped into
the valley, and large ranches were subdivided just as veterans returned from
war. Miyagi, a decorated war hero from the 442nd Regimental Combat
Team, returned home to find out that his wife and baby boy had died in the
Manzanar internment camp. Heartbroken, he settled in the lush California valley
and quietly began a new life.
In “The Karate Kid”, Miyagi agrees
to train Daniel to compete in the All-Valley Karate Tournament. It is the only
way that Daniel is able to stand up for himself against a ruthless and
unscrupulous bully. Miyagi walks over to Daniel, who is admiring a yellow 1948
Ford Super DeLuxe convertible.
“You ready?” Miyagi asks.
“Yeah, I guess
so,” Daniel replies.
Miyagi shakes
his head, disbelief flashing across his austere face.
“Daniel-son”, he
says, and pauses, waiting. “Walk on road. Walk right side—safe, walk left
side—safe, walk middle—sooner or later . . . kweeksh, get the squish, just like grape. Here, karate same thing.
Either you karate do yes or karate do no. You karate do que-so . . . kweeksh,
just like grape.” […] “You ready?”
“Yeah, I’m
ready.”
Late in the summer of
2006, just months after we had adopted Yohannes from Ethiopia, we were deep in
discernment. In Ethiopia, we had found out that Yohannes had been separated
from his older sister Faven. Should we .
. . could we, adopt her? My husband Ward would not proceed until he knew what
Faven thought. Since she was 12,000 kilometres away, and the adoption was not
guaranteed, it was difficult to find out.
We were able to
recruit our mentor and guide from our recent adoption trip. He told Faven that her
brother was in Canada, with the family that she had briefly met in the spring.
He might have pulled out a map and shown her where Yohannes was, across two
continents divided by the Atlantic Ocean, a distance that she could not have
fathomed in her seven-year-old mind. He asked her if she would like to live
with her brother. She answered in quiet Amharic, “I would do anything to be
with my brother.”
Imagining and living is
not the same thing.
Neither Faven nor Daniel could
navigate the road alone; neither was ready for the change that was thrust upon
them. Each was determined to prove something.
Daniel was able to subdue his emotions and impatience to learn to walk on the
right or left side of the road. Faven, on the other hand, was triggered—instead
of guided—by the wisdom of another, and she zigzagged down the road, confused
and searching, risking everything.
On the day that Faven
“ran away” with a friend a few weeks ago, it was -15 degrees C; the wind was
howling. I knew that it only took minutes plus scant seconds to freeze to death
in this cruel weather. I also knew that Faven did not know it, could not know
it.
We filed a missing
persons report with the police.
We have developed a
certain emotional perceptiveness when it comes to Faven; we are almost always
able to predict when she is about to “go madly off”. Unfortunately, we have not
yet found any successful blocks for
her outbursts, and just have to avoid sparring to the best of our ability until
she exhausts herself. It is painful and stressful to witness.
Faven running away was
a new and unfamiliar posture. We were
perplexed; just three days earlier she was settled—happy even. What had
happened in those intervening days to set her against us, and onto a trail of
self-destruction?
There is a form of karate called knockdown. It is a type of fighting with
no protective gear . . . bare knuckles. Unless there is a knockdown or sweep, the
match is continuous. It was not Faven’s sudden decision to leave our home that
I struggled with, it was the wrath of her anger against me, the incessant
verbal attacks, and her attempt to engage me in battle, that crushed me,
without fully knocking me down. I packed up two of the kids and left for the
cottage to re-fuel.
As
Yohannes, Laurèn and I slipped out of the cottage, and clipped into newly waxed
skis, we set into the untouched snow. Both kids used the same wax and were
shown the same technique, yet one slipped and fell, unable to get a grip, and
the other couldn’t move because the snow simply stuck to the bottom of the
skis. How could the same care create such
vastly different results?
One of the most moving scenes
in “The Karate Kid” comes after Daniel has spent a couple of days “in
training”; he has waxed the car, cleaned the deck, and painted the fence at the
request of Miyagi. This is supposed to be karate training, and Daniel isn’t
impressed; he doesn’t think he has learned a thing. He accuses Miyagi of using
him as a “goddamn slave”. He loses
his patience, feels sorry for himself, and tells Miyagi that he is leaving. Miyagi
calls him back, and says, “Not everything is as seems”.
The feisty Daniel would have
given up, if not for the care and patience of an older, wiser guide. With quiet
control, Miyagi asked Daniel, “Show me…sand the floor”, “Show me…wax on, wax
off”, “Show me…paint the fence”. Through the interaction, Daniel shifts from
petulant child to awakened apprentice. Like a flower unfolding at dawn, he gradually
opens his mind and heart to the lesson. We are rooting for Daniel. Then Miyagi catches
Daniel off-guard as he throws punches and releases kicks; he simultaneously
cues Daniel: “sand the floor”, “wax on/wax off”, and so on. Daniel is able to follow,
and protect himself, perhaps for the first time. *
Now, we are rooting for Faven. We have been quietly
cheering for eight years, and actively supporting for five.
In the initial days
that Faven ricocheted away from us, and we pulled her back, I wore a suit of
armor. Her explosive, colorful language bounced off, and yet insidiously
penetrated. I was stoic to a degree that troubled me. What had happened to my compassion? Faven did not want to be at
home, could not be at home. Ward was able to find her safety—at a friend’s
house—and we could all slowly decompress.
When Faven vanished on the vast streets of northwest
Calgary, we were stunned. We knew Faven didn’t have “street smarts”, and we knew
her naivety would disarm any instinct she might have to protect herself. She
yearns and she trusts, so she follows.
Without warning, on the fifth day of this “excursion into
hell”, my armor melted away, exposing a visceral layer of pain. The creative
and imaginative part of my brain took over, producing nightmare after
nightmare. Faven’s treatment and rejection of me ruptured holes in my heart
that I had long ago patched up. The last five years of effort, love, and relationship-building
vanished; in its place appeared doubt: doubt with such depth that I wasn’t sure
I would ever climb out; doubt that questioned my ability to participate as Faven’s
mother with such vigor, ever again.
There is nothing like
nature to pull me out of myself. As Laurèn and Yohannes and I finally made our
way across the spotless snow, I looked back to see tracks shifting to the left,
and then to the right; the crooked tread came right to where we stood catching
our breath. Laurèn leaned on her pole, and pitched sideways into the snow. I
looked down at her, held hostage for a moment by seemingly pliable crystals. I
looked ahead and saw . . . emptiness: a story not yet written, a palate of possibility,
unchartered terrain.
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