Free Changes by Charles Colyott Page A

it was alright.  Given our track record with food, maybe romantic wasn’t what we needed.
    "So, when we last left off, I believe young Randall was learning how to stand around for hours?  What happened next?"
    "A bunch of stuff that eventually brought us together here.  I believe we’re supposed to… what was your phrase?  ‘Live in the now?’  So what difference does it make?" I said.
    "It makes a difference because we don’t really know each other."
    "I think we know plenty."
    "Ahem, ‘every piece of information is another piece of the puzzle’.  Sound familiar?"
    "What kind of asshole talks like that?" I said, biting into a fry.
    "C’mon, man, talk!"
    I took a swig of beer and said, "Alright.  So the standing practice provides a foundation.  When you stand in a posture, over and over, after awhile your body learns to relax into it.  Once Master Wu was confident that I could stand, he taught me to move.  From each standing posture to the next.  Tai Chi Chuan."
    "Like the guy at the school we visited." she said.
    "No, nothing at all like that guy." I said.
    "But still, it’s like the stuff the old people practice in the park, right?"
    "There are a lot of teachers that teach a health exercise they call Tai Chi, but real Tai Chi Chuan is more than a health exercise, it is, first and foremost, a martial art.  One of the translations for Tai Chi Chuan is ‘Supreme Ultimate Boxing.’"

"The inside kind," she said.
    "Internal, yes." I said.  "Wu had me practicing the form, the movements all strung together, for four to six hours a day."
    "Damn."
    I shrugged.  "It was fun compared to just standing.  After a few months, he started to teach me about the energetic anatomy of the body.  The meridians and acupuncture points, the ways that energy moves through the body, that sort of thing, as they related to my practice.
    "When I was fifteen, my father died of a heart attack.  I didn’t really have anywhere to go, so Master Wu invited me to stay with him.  From that point on, every moment was a training of some sort.  Mornings belonged to Tai Chi Chuan, afternoons were for acupuncture and evenings meant studying Taoist texts and herbalism.
    "When I was twenty-three, I was allowed to take over a portion of my teacher’s case load.  The simple ones, mostly.  When I was twenty-five, he told me he had nothing more to teach me.  So I moved to the states, opened a practice, and that’s that."
    I finished my beer and went back to my burger.
    Tracy was watching me.
    "What?" I said.
    "You know what."
    "Do we really have to talk about this?" I said.  "What about you?  Tell me about yourself."
    "I’m an open book.  I have no secrets." she said.  "You, however, are leaving out quite a big chunk of your life.  If you don’t want to tell me, that’s alright, but just say so.  Don’t insult my intelligence."
    She put up a good front, but I could tell that I’d hurt her feelings.  And I didn’t want to keep things from her.  So I put my food down, ordered another beer when the waiter came by, and I told her.
    I told her about moving to Seattle and opening a practice, about teaching Tai Chi in the park there, and about meeting and falling in love with one of my students, a Chinese-American woman named Miranda Chan.  I told her how, after a long courtship, I married Miranda on a cool September day, and how our daughter, Grace, was born eight years later, two days after our anniversary. 
    Tracy looked surprised, but she kept listening, so I continued.  I wanted a drink, something stronger, or a diversion: a fire alarm, maybe, or a tornado, but nothing came.  So I dug my fingers into that old wound and found it still fresh, still ripe with infection, and the words spilled out on their own.  I listened passively and studied her eyes for that sickening pity that so many people exhibit, but, in her, there was none.  Only concern.
    All she said was, "What happened?"
    "We were bad parents," I said.
    And it