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“I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead. ”
― The Year of Magical Thinking
i.
Daniel doesn’t remember the sound of his dad’s voice.
This made him panic, the first time he realized it, around fourteen. The guilt of it crushed him in his twenties, when he and Amanda got engaged and Ma blurted out I wish your father was here to see this. Then it just became a sad, small corner of his life, when he was thirty-two and held his own child for the first time. The older he got, the less remarkable it became to have a dead father. Like what happened to his family, to him, was nothing.
The thought kept him up at night, something sour swirling in his stomach.
Three weeks after Sam was born, Mr. Miyagi turned seventy-seven. Daniel started recording everything.
On the bulky family video camera, then a camcorder, then tiny, pixelated clips on his flip phone. Fishing on the lake, building a dojo out of the new house’s former pool house, random Tuesday nights where Mr. Miyagi would sing Sam lullabies in Japanese. He took thousands of pictures, printed them and backed up the copies on laptops, phones, the Cloud when it came along. You act like I’m movie star, Mr. Miyagi joked, when he saw Daniel uploading a twenty-six minute video of him teaching four-year-old Sam to block. Start charging you for shots soon.
Daniel waved him off, endured his wife and daughter’s teasing about how he spent most life events behind the camera, from the photo albums Amanda looks like a single mother. It’s worth it. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
And then Mr. Miyagi died.
The hundreds of hours of footage do nothing to soften the blow. The grief feels literally paralyzing, his legs and arms gone numb and tingling. A bizarre coping mechanism against a sensation that isn’t fear, or mere sadness. It can’t be beaten, or railed against. His body can’t go on without the person who taught it how to be something amazing. He had his dad for eight years. He had Mr. Miyagi for twenty-seven. Hearing his voice in letters and clips from Christmas morning wasn’t enough.
How could it ever be enough?
Sam starts third grade and the dealership expands to a second location. There are people who need him. To care, to be the defender Mr. Miyagi was so proud he grew up to become.
So he slowly drags himself back towards the light. He forces himself to go to bed at a normal hour. Puts down the red wine before he finishes the entire bottle in one night. A month after the funeral, he does a kata next to the pool, focusing on his breathing.
It’s a pale California morning, the rising sun turning the tree tops golden. He closes his eyes, stretches his arms out into the day. And for ten minutes, he can exhale, the weight on his chest a little less crushing. He can feel Mr. Miyagi next to him, like he’s seventeen and they both still have so much time.
It’s not enough. But it’s as close as he can get. He will learn to make it enough.
ii.
Sam is moving like a killer out on the training deck. She’s vicious and aggressive and beautiful, the way a lightning strike is, the way a lion baring its teeth is. His daughter is moving like a cobra, not a crane. Johnny is grinning, elated by her offensive strikes, and suddenly Daniel can’t be here. In his own dojo, so green and peaceful, where he learned the only thing that calms him down.
He’s breaking this place, somehow.
A few of the kids murmur as he turns on his heels and goes inside, moving fast. He kneels on the tatami mat in front of his framed photo of Mr. Miyagi. He’s trying to breathe, but the air seems to get stuck in his throat. The numb feeling is returning in his legs, the pain he’s been running from for ten years. The blood rushing in his ears too hard for him to hear Johnny out in the yard, Ms. LaRusso, Mr. Moscowitz, keep sparring, I’m gonna go help your dad with the Gatorade.
The door barely slides open as Johnny does his approximation of slipping into the room, shutting it too hard behind him. “Dude, you okay? You looked like you were gonna ralph out there.”
Daniel shakes his head, inhales harshly to pull the hot wetness brimming back inside him. Not here, not in front of Johnny Lawrence. “This isn’t right.”
His voice is horrifyingly thin, seconds from buckling.
“What the hell are you talking about? She looks great out there.”
“I can’t feel my legs.” I can’t do this, I’m so sorry, I’m ruining it, I’m ruining it.
There’s a heady pause. Daniel can practically hear panic alarms blaring in Johnny’s head at the first signs of vulnerability. Then, a sigh.
“Because you’re kneeling like a kindergartener and cutting off your circulation.” Johnny’s hands are on him before he realizes what’s happening, bracing his shoulder as he pushes his legs out to the side. Daniel rolls, and kicks him in the chest. Johnny goes down hard on his ass.
“What the hell? I’m trying to help you!”
Daniel scoffs, shakes his head. “Trust me, you’ve done enough.”
Johnny’s face hardens. “Jesus, again with this? God forbid your daughter pick up a few things outside your precious methods.”
His heart is beating in the side of his neck. He tries to stand up, but wobbles as the blood rushes back down into his feet. “My methods are what's best for the kids! They honor Mr Miyagi–”
“How? What about what I teach? I learned that from Kreese. Do you think I’m 'honoring' him?” Johnny makes exaggerated air quotes.
“That is not the same,” Daniel snaps. The tears are back in his eyes again, what is happening, he needs to pull it together–
“Why? Because my style is bullshit and yours is the one true way?”
“Because this is all I have left of him!”
It rings across the dojo. Outside, all Daniel hears is the rustle of leaves. Which definitely means there’s two dozen teenagers trying to eavesdrop from the edge of the deck. He closes his eyes, tries not to cringe at his outburst. There’s shifting beside him, then a warm weight across his back. He tenses, eyes opening in alarm, but what he sees is more confusing than threatening.
Johnny’s arm is around his shoulders, patting his arm in an awkward, faux-firm way. “Shit, man. Can’t imagine loving someone as much as you loved that guy,” he says. “I mean, my dad left when I was five.”
“You loved K–”
“He wasn’t there when my kids were born, man,” Johnny says, looking at Daniel like he’s the idiot. “He didn’t give a toast at my wedding.”
Daniel cocks his head. “How do you know about that?”
“Because you have six million pictures of the guy all over your place!” Johnny gestures to the nearest one. “He was like your…”
He swallows, dips his chin in a shallow nod. “Yeah. He was.”
Johnny squeezes his shoulder, then clears his throat. “And he wouldn’t want you beating yourself up over this. He seemed like a chill dude, the two times I met him. I mean, not to me, but...”
It’s strange to hear Johnny frame it like that, a minor character in the story of his life. “D’you know that Anthony told me the other day he doesn’t even remember him? And now Sam is out there just…"
"Kicking ass?"
"Striking first. I don’t want them to forget what he taught us.”
“You know Miyagi karate wasn’t taught thousands of years ago by waxing cars, right?” Johnny says. His arm is still around Daniel. “He changed things when he taught you, just like we're doing. Doesn’t mean he’s not still a part of it.”
Daniel turns on the mat, so they’re sitting face-to-face. “I hate that he’s not here.”
“I know.”
“He’s missing everything.” I miss him.
“That’s life. You just gotta keep going. Learn to adapt.” Johnny runs a hand through his hair, leaving it in awkward blonde spikes. Daniel’s always secretly found his all-day bedhead kind of endearing. His breathing feels looser just looking at it. “I mean, I know you can. We never would’ve teamed up thirty years ago.”
Daniel chuckles wetly. “That’s for sure.”
“So let’s go out and teach these kids some fucking tornado kicks, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just…give me a second.” He looks at the picture of Mr. Miyagi. Thinks about his sensei fleeing across the ocean to escape war, breaking thousands of years of tradition. Hadn’t he had a good life, here in California? With the LaRussos? With Daniel?
Daniel inhales. Deep, low. And as he breathes out, centering himself, he sees that Johnny is doing it with him. Johnny, who as of last month thought passing out drunk in front of Top Gun was the same as meditating.
He raises an eyebrow when he catches him staring. "What, LaRusso?"
He leans forward and kisses Johnny, fast. Close-mouthed and chaste enough to have deniability, that it’s just an Italian thing. It’s worth the whole crummy afternoon, the way Johnny flushes from hairline to chin.
iii.
Sam loses. But she gives the best fight of her life. With focus. With honor. Her tanmee would be so proud.
And for now, for Daniel, that's enough.