It was during the first class of February that we had quietly joked around on the dojo floor.
This could be our last class for a while.
We were joking because none of us could understand what was coming.
News cycles talked about it, online videos showed something different, how could it not be a matter of time.
Class continued as normal, but it was more muted, heavier in the air.
After class we stopped going around the corner to the pizza shop or the Japanese Restaurant as the teacher spent most of the time talking with the senior students.
The dojo needed to prepare.
And then in March the world shut down.
A few of us met the teacher at the dojo as we boxed up some of the training equipment and wrapped up the swords to take home. Everybody had a list of students to check in on each week, make sure they were ok and keeping up the practice until everything could be sorted out.
The final instruction from the dojo was to practice jojutsu until otherwise notified.
That Thursday there was no class.
Not as in something came up and I had to miss the class, but as in the dojo was closed.
For the first time in my adult life there was not class to attend.
I decided to keep the same schedule, there might not have been class at the dojo, but there was still class to attend. I practiced on my own following the same structure and lessons of the dojo.
The teacher would call and check in with my twice a week, and in turn I would check in on the junior students below me. Our conversations would always start with an inquiry as to how the other students are doing, are they still practicing, and if they needed any help.
Make sure I was not only encouraging, but make sure that they knew they were not alone, and that something would be happening soon.
The first time I saw my teacher and everybody else on the screen I had to hide my tears. Just to see the smiles, hear the voices, and be getting together again, in any form, for class.
The instructions were to train as best as one could as obviously corrections and feeling were limited due to the medium.
What was important was to keep going, and the mistakes could be corrected when we were all back in-person.
Soon after I noticed that one of my sempai had missed a few classes, and when I asked the teacher where they were during our weekly check in I was told that they won’t be coming back to class.
The silence that followed told the rest.
Somehow the teacher had gotten permission to open the dojo and conduct the streaming classes from there, or maybe he didn’t and he decided to do it anyway.
There was a different feeling to class now, we were all at least one step closer to being back in the dojo.
In one of the discussions with the senior students, it was decided to expand the virtual classes, and each day of the week one of us was to stream from the dojo.
Instructions on jojutsu, what to show, and how to show it.
None of it was ideal, budo needed to be transmitted one-to-one and with a feeling that just was not possible through such a medium.
But at the same time, in the entire history of budo this had never happened, and in the spirit of how we responded and conducted ourselves, that would determine what was permissible or not.
At least for now.
I had never heard the dojo so quiet, having not been inside it for a year.
Even when class wasn’t going on, there was always the hum of some background noise.
The traffic outside, the store below the dojo, the people above it.
Everything was quiet.
This was my first class, and I arrived early to check the equipment and see what angles looked best from the dojo floor.
Tape had been marked out already showing how close or far away one could move and still be in the correct frame and distance.
Some time after that we were back to in-person training with some restrictions.
Most of the classes were now held outside, in the park across the street, as we all couldn’t fit inside the dojo and keep the mandated restrictions.
That first class I ran up and hugged my teacher, I didn’t care what mandates or restrictions I broke.
It was the first time I had ever hugged him.
Class was now conducted in a large circle, with each person being ten feet or so apart as we practiced jojutsu. The teacher or one of the senior students often shouting through the mask they were wearing to somebody on the other side of the circle.
Shortly after that the world opened back up and we cautiously returned to the dojo.
To just be back, to just stand again in the dojo, to hear he practice again.
We did what were told, we kept going.
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