Hungry and worn out from a buddy’s birthday party, Liam Sunday last night that today he would be expected to demonstrate all the kung-fu forms he’d spent the last four years studying, even the ones he now took for granted. Panic, absolute panic arose. Suddenly, he said, it was all gone.
Liam and I walked out onto the deck, and I told him what I so often told myself in kung-fu class. He knew all the steps, I said, his body had them. All he had to do was to practice until he’d brought them all out.
Maybe he believed me because after practicing he said that yes, it was starting to come back to him. Sunday night, practicing included running to his friend Zakwani’s house for a short tutorial on Eight-Kick Form. Zak can kick higher and better than any other kid I know, so it’s a good thing he could take some time to help out his old friend.
Do I think that Liam felt ready on Monday afternoon to take the test that would earn him the rank of Purple Belt Star? No, I know that he didn’t feel ready. At camp the past week, he told me, there had never been the time to revisit the old forms. All I could say was that he should ask Instructor Mark some time to practice before starting the test. I kept telling him that he had all steps and that his body knew what it was doing. I think he believed me.
The classroom had never looked so empty as it did when Liam and I walked down the stairs. It looked twice the size that I knew it was. Liam said that he was ready for the test, and asked if he could take a few minutes to practice Dragon Form, the first form all the kids learn. Five minutes, Mark said he could practice until the test began in five minutes.
I sat against the rock wall, in one of the mismatched chairs set aside for parents. Liam thought he had only a few things to practice, and Mark started him on the first steps of Dragon Form. Step by step until he got it right and then again until he did it better. I sat forward in my seat and watched, trusting that he would be ready for the test when it began.
Alone, all alone, Liam sweated through the longest five minutes of his Summer. Without the 1 eighteen other kids from his Kung Fu class Liam had the entire practice floor to fill. One kid in a big room with mirrors on the front and back walls. He jumped, punched, kicked and said not a word. If he made a mistake, he just corrected himself and kept practicing.
But this wasn’t practice, it was the test. Mark told me this while we watched. Liam was doing so well, but he was nervous; not telling him that the test had begun was just the right thing to do.
When Mark called him over to his desk and told him that the test was over, Liam’s hair was plastered to his head and his face glowed pink. His eyes were bright and he just kept smiling. Even while I told him that he had to practice treating his parents with greater respect before he’d get the chance to test for his Red Belt; that he’d need to listen better, to stop teasing his sister before their game stopped being funny and not to need to be asked to do something many times before doing it. Liam kept smiling. He should have that Red Belt this Winter.
