Chapter 1

There had to be a better way.

I slammed down the box in frustration. I couldn’t imagine lifting one more box up into the apartment’s tiny overhead attic. What would I do when it was time to move again? How would I unload everything quickly?

I definitely needed to look into the whole zen-styling thing. Seriously. How many books and knick-knacks could a girl cart around from town to town? I had way too much stuff.

The problem, I thought as I huffed a curl of hair out of my eyes, was that I was just too sentimental. I needed to cut some ties to the past. Like this box marked “Raggedy Anne and Andy.” Those two sculptures had been made for me by my grandfather when I was a baby, and they were cute, but did I really need to keep them to pass on to my own babies someday? I might not even ever have children. I sighed. I didn’t particularly want kids. But hey, someday I might, and then they should have heirlooms, right? Maybe, yeah. Maybe some smaller heirlooms. Maybe just mom’s sterling baby spoon and sippy cup that I had used, too, as a toddler. I grinned and chucked the box of porcelain figures through the open doorway into the kitchen.

The box crashed, the unmistakable sound of tinkling broken pottery reaching my ears along with a light euphoric feeling. I could definitely get used to this whole Zen thing. There were still ten or twelve more boxes in the living room stacked up by the ladder to the attic, and I was wondering how many of them I could talk myself into throwing away when my mom burst into the room.

“Siri! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, mom, I just decided I’m going to get rid of some of these boxes instead of storing them,” I said, pointing at the dented box lying on its side in the doorway.

“Thank the gods, I thought you fell down the stairs or something! How about instead of throwing them, you start another pile on the porch, alright? We just got here, don’t want the neighbors to think I’m beating you already.”

“Ha! Yeah right, okay, mom.” I trailed after her as she walked into the kitchen to grab the abused box. “Speaking of beating, when do we start?”

For as long as I could remember, my mother and I had fought.

Almost every day, we went through the same dance –Tang Soo Do, Qigong, Aikido, Krav Maga, even a little Capoeira. Hand to hand combat, bo staffs, nun chukkas and the occasional sword. Mom said she started teaching martial arts to me as soon as I could run without holding on to something, which put my earliest days of training back to when I was just over a year old. According to her, we’d started with basic Qigong forms, building my strength and endurance. By the time I was three, she caught me on video doing flying kicks off the sofa.

Training always ended with sweaty hugs, good food, and a huge pitcher of water. There was never any shortage of treats in the house, either – mom believed in eating healthy, but also considered chocolate one of the four basic food groups. The kitchen was always the first room mom unpack