Saturday Morning

I returned to Saturday morning t’ai chi in the park yesterday for the first time in months. All the old familiar faces were there. It felt good to do the form, and it’s the jump start I need to get myself back in the habit of doing the form every morning (it’s one of the many self-caring habits that fell by the wayside in the past six months). I was even able to pretend for a while that nothing in my life had changed since the last time I stood in that lovely green place, slowly shifting my weight and sinking my ch’i into my tan t’ien.

At the end of the session, as I walked across the space toward my car, I saw Jeremy, a distinguished, reserved and very serious gentleman in his early 70s who is one of the t’ai chi regulars, and is an advanced practitioner of other martial arts as well. He’s a retired journalist, and I’ve always felt a little intimidated by him. He greeted me warmly, and as we said hello, we spontaneously took each other’s hand and squeezed. Our greeting was almost affectionate. I’ve known this man for six years, and there is no precedent for such a manifestation of warmth between us-- we've certainly never touched--, yet somehow it felt very natural, and not the least awkward. Perhaps it was the spirit of my mother, who was always far more socially adept and outgoing than I, expressing itself through the medium of her daughter. Or perhaps it was because I felt so aware this morning of how wonderful it is to be able to drive to Northern Virginia on any given Saturday morning, and there they’ll be, an earnest and focused group of people whose only reason for getting up and out that early is to be in touch with their essential life energy in the presence of nature and like-minded others. Whatever it was, Jeremy felt it too. It made my day.