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I
Am A Sensei's Wife
 by
Cary Dufour
Yes, it
is true, I am a Sensei's Wife. I forgot my own name
years ago. I think it was about the same time that I
began to be known as "the lady at the
counter", "Sensei's Wife", "that
Karate guy's wife", the list goes on. I have never
minded this. I am going to tell you why this little
thing that 10 years ago would have driven me insane,
brings a smile to my face today.
My
second "date" with my husband entailed me
sitting cross-legged on a gymnasium floor, watching him
go through a 2 and 1/2 hour karate exam. He and the
other students gruelled themselves physically over
various techniques, various physical exercises and
literal "fights" (which I was later instructed
to call Sparring Matches). All of this, while a man in
white pajamas with a black belt around his waist belted
out screams and yelled words I did not understand. The
students bellowed responses were more words that I did
not understand, and they never minded the yelling and
scolding that they received. My husband got his yellow
belt that night. We then went out to supper. I remember
thinking, "this guy is insane and I need to stay as
far away as I can from him".
My
thoughts then were and are pretty much what every
spouse, male or female, goes through and thinks of the
first time they watch their partner in karate.
Especially if they have never seen the like before. I
would like to tell you about the man that 21 year old
"insane" individual has become and the journey
that we have both taken to get there. As you may have
now guessed, I did not heed my thoughts and run away.
A
Passion for Karate and for Life
As I
watched more and more of the karate classes and got to
know him more, I began to realize that although I had
grown up constantly in search of and often coming in
contact with things that "spoke" to me, there
are plenty of people in this world who never find that
certain something that they truly love. Not a lover, not
our children, not our families, but something that we
love simply because it is a part of our being, an
essence of us. As I listened to him over the years and
watched him train I began to realize that karate for
this man was not just an exercise, nor a way to stay
physically fit. This was a passion like few people know
that early in their lives, if they experience it at all.
Many a
long weekend was spent sitting in the pouring rain, or
scorching sun, "watching" while he trained
with the other students. Often I would be irritated that
I seemed to be wasting my time watching all of this
training, but when I would voice this to him he would
only reply, "Honey, I want you there with me,
watching me, I need your support in this". So I
would sit, watching. No, there were never many other
spouses over the years that sat and watched. Although,
there were many that watched the first time, most did
not sit there endlessly through July, the month of
summer training camp. I realize now, that this was
needed in preparation for the life we chose.
When my
husband was a brown belt, we moved on my urging to a
remoter area. We were 14 hours away from his school, and
still after two and a half years I did not have the
understanding of what this would do to this man. This
was because I still viewed this as a sport. Something
that he could just pick up and do at another school,
wherever we ended up. We were at our new residence 1
month before he checked out the local schools. But he
always came home saddened. He missed his Sensei, the way
he taught, the friendship they had developed, and he
missed his training with his fellow students. I began to
realize that this man had become a family with this
school that he missed so much, and essentially I had
taken him from that family. He did travel on occasion to
his former school, but a fourteen hour drive is
expensive and hard on the system. He always came back
more saddened than when he left. Saddened because now he
no longer even felt a part of that growing family. They
were growing, but leaving him behind.
As years
went by there were times that he did not train at all.
But I will tell you that this man never smiled unless he
was consistently training in karate. I began to realize
that it was a way of life, and that he was at a place in
his life where we have to choose between two paths --
one path goes on to your destiny and fulfillment and the
other is the one we all try and get off of.
We
married in the summer of 1994 and bought our first
house. During a rather stressful conversation in the car
one day, being so desperately sick and tired of
listening to the "some days" of a man's hopes
and dreams, I pulled the car to the side of the road and
turned to him. This is what I told him, "For five
years I have patiently listened to you talk about
"one day" and "some day" and "I
wish" and "I wish I could", all over
opening up a karate school, which you know that you
cannot do without first obtaining your black belt and
talking to your Sensei. Now you have a choice -- you can
either get off of your duff and phone him and talk to
him and we will open a school and see what happens, or
you can shut up about it. But if I have to listen to you
swoon about this for another five years, I will die.
Live a little, what have you truly got to lose?"
Well, my
husband was not so thrilled with my response, which
happens every now and again still, but I am a wife... On
the way home a song came on the radio. It was a song
that he still to this day believes gave him the
motivation to open up the school we now operate. It is
called "Standing outside the Fire". His
favorite line is, "life is not tried; it is merely
survived, if you're standing outside the fire".
He
obtained permission to open up the school at the level
he was at but would need to train intensely to be ready
for his black belt exam in one year. Our first night of
classes we had 98 students show up to take karate. My
husband came out to me at the table and said, "I
don't think that I can do this, there are an awful lot
of people in there." There was a glint in his eye
that night that was indescribable, a wanting, a needing
to be part of something like what he had left behind. So
I smiled and said, "get in there and teach baby.
You can do this, you have dreamed of this."
The
following year he trained six days a week and taught
three. We fought on the days he didn't train because he
had no time for his family. It was stressful and it was
testing. But as the months went by, I watched a man who
was for the most part a man that rarely smiled, turn
into a man with a constant gleam in his eye, and a smile
on his face. I continued to reach realizations about a
person consumed with "living" karate. A person
who most times feels the need to put karate first, even
above his family at times. A person that is not whole
unless they are training.
I sobbed
my way through his black belt exam. I screamed at him to
keep his hands up while they busted his ribs and yelled
out phrases like "osu!" that six years before
I had not even understood when one man sent him flying
through the air like a rag doll with one kick to the
legs. My father took pictures when my tears made it
impossible to see through the lenses. It was three days
long. I massaged his muscles. I encouraged him to stay
when he contemplated leaving the country so he wouldn't
have to finish it, and I watched a man terrified that he
couldn't do it -- that everything he had given the
better part of his life to would result in
failure.-?
I had
never seen a grown man want something so badly that they
were willing to give everything they had to get it. I
was beginning to understand a person who
"lived" karate. To say that it brought us
closer at that time would be a lie. He was a man focused
on one thing, karate. I was slowly becoming accustomed
to this way of life.-?
It took
months for him to heal properly. But we started our own
summer training camp three days after that exam ended,
and he taught five nights per week for a month. To be
honest I rarely witness the man not teaching. Occasionally
he will get a cold that makes it impossible for him to
talk, and he will sit, while the now higher belt
students instruct according to what he wants to go on in
the classroom. But it never lasts, as it drives him
crazy not to be in there, being a part of the new family
and school that he has helped to create.
Seek
and Ye Shall Find
For many
people that have never trained karate, or have never
witnessed years with a person who has, they would call
these kind of people obsessed. That, we all know, is not
healthy. Take away for a moment, the physicalness of
karate and look at the spiritual side of it, then look
at the mental side of it.-?
Some of
us spend our entire lives searching and never finding,
striving but never accomplishing, yearning yet never
satisfied. All of this for an internal contact with a
higher power: something, anything, above and beyond
ourselves but yet still coming from within. A connection
with something, an eternal partnership of sorts with the
universal energy, power within, chi, whichever you like.
Something we believe in that only speaks to us. Some
leave this world never even becoming enlightened enough
to search it out. Karateka are a kind unto their own.
They strive for all of these things, they realize even
more. Karate becomes a part of them that they can
survive without, but not live without. It is a way of
life
Many
spouses cannot understand the time that a karateka puts
into their training, and I will not tell you that it
does not make you feel abandoned at times. I will not
tell you that you will be "drawn" to take
karate yourself over the years. What I will tell you is
that to watch a person grow and realize their own true
potential, something that "speaks" to only
them, is one of the most incredible experiences that I
have had in this lifetime.-?
When a
member of your family spends three or four nights per
week at the dojo, don't stay at home and be lonely. Go
there, watch them, look into their eyes and try to see
the passion that is there. Try to see what it is that
karate does for them. When you realize what a big part
of them their karate really is, you will not want them
to stop. For how could you ever ask a person that you
care about to give up a part of themselves. Would you
ask them to cut off that leg because it doesn't quite
match the other one? We all sacrifice a few things for
the ones we love. Myself, I am not a karateka, but I
finally understand... I am a Sensei's Wife.
 Recommended book:
"Dancing the Dream: The Seven Sacred Paths of Human Transformation"
by Jamie Sams.
Info/Order
this
book
About The
Author-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?
CARY DUFOUR is a Graphics
& Web Site Designer from Northern British Columbia, Canada. She
operates a Martial Arts School with her husband. To find out more, you
may contact her by email at indigo@pris.bc.ca
or visit her website at http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hollow/7073
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