Current mood:	fierce
Entry tags:	fencing, health, life

Commitment in Steel

I am tense, mask under one arm. "Forgive me," I say, quiet but without hedging. "It's been over a year. I have forgotten all that I know."

"Let us see," he says. We salute one another and then he says, "Let's start with a simple exercise. En garde. Keep your distance, now."

And then--

--I remember. Everything I thought I'd forgotten. How to stand. How to move. How far away I have to be for a lunge to succeed. How to parry. All my fancy disengages. I even remember obscure rules--"That wasn't my point, was it." "No... you're right. I attacked first and you didn't parry."

But there are things I'd forgotten--

--the smell of sweat and steel and nylon. The way five minutes of this has me working harder than twenty minutes of jogging. How good it feels to make no excuses for aggression or cunning. How much you laugh when you fail... how much you crow when you score the unexpected point.

An hour later, I am ready for another hour. For another two hours. I am perched on the concrete ledge just off the strip, sucking down a bottle of water and panting like a wolf in the summer sun, watching other people assemble for the group practice I can't stay for tonight... and I feel at home... as if I'd never left. I never want to leave.

There is exhiliration in running. Solitude has its pleasures, and you should know who you are when no one's around. But it's nothing to this. This is a fierceness of joy I wish I'd known about as a teenage girl, when I misspent my youth's most resilient years hiding in dark libraries, thinking that flesh was a cage I had to rise above in order to reach more spiritual aims. How I wish I could go back and tell myself that you can't rise above your body by ignoring it. Like a crack in a dam, the longer you neglect the flesh the more power it has over you, until at last it is your master and you drown in the tide of its demands.

"Are you staying?" one of the other fencers asks.

"Not tonight. Next time, though," I say. And grin. "You'll have to be nice to me, though. I just got back from being pregnant. Hey, coach!"

"Yes?"

My eyes have caught on their uniforms. "Do I get a patch now? I have my own gear."

"Ah! Of course." He hands it to me. "You didn't forget so much as you thought, eh?"

"No!" I say. "No."

"It's hard to forget these things," he says. "The body remembers. And of course, it helps when you have an excellent teacher!"

I laugh. One foot behind the other, plié into a curtsey, hands folded over the grip of the foil I hold against my chest. "It is the truth." I straighten. "I will see you Saturday."

"Very good."

Once I get home I assemble all the necessary tools and sit, light gleaming on the needle as I stitch. Fleetingly I think of getting this done by a professional seamstress, because it's no small work to sew a patch onto the arm of a jacket... but only fleetingly. I will do it myself as a commitment, written in cloth, sealed in steel. I will not be that girl again.

As I work, I sing.


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