Assignment: Describe a person or group of people

Surfers and their Secrets

My mom was out surfing in Malibu when the phone calls started coming in. Panicked. From everywhere. My brother, Mike. My father, Garey. Where is Mom? Where is Mom? At 46 she had just started surfing. She had always been beach bum, body surfer, wave runner, diver-into-the-ocean at any time of day, but recently her relationship with the ocean had gotten more involved. Come Saturday and Sunday, 6 am, rain or shine, she would snuggle her long board into her car, throw on her wetsuit and disappear for hours. Mike and my sister arrived from their apartments while my mom was still at the beach. The three of us crumbled on the couch under the news: Piper, Rose and Sean—my oldest brother, his wife and son—had been killed in a car accident. My mom came home, dripping with sea water and smiles: evidence that she had had a good surf session. We let her put her board down, the last bit of normality before she started screaming. A mistake, a mistake, it must be a mistake. Not my son. Not my grandson. Not Rose.

After that my mom started surfing ferociously.

Southern California is stereotyped for surfers: the laid back guys with shaggy hair who say ‘dude’ and ‘gnarly’ all the time, but truth be told, not that many people in L.A. surf. The handful of the millions who live in the city who do wake before dawn, and have coerced their work schedule to permit daily surf sessions, have a secret—a big, obvious, blue secret and more often then not they are willing to share. My mom was a Kindergarten teacher before my brother died, before surfing took over her life. She now teaches sick or disabled students one-on-one inside their homes. The schedule is much more flexible so every morning now she packs up her car with her surfboard, wetsuit, bucket, towel, plastic bottle full of hot water (used as a post-surf shower), and a 100 other little surfer tools and heads to 26th street in Manhattan Beach. She can not afford to live there, so she commutes, as do most of the others who make up the 26th Street surf crew.

When you arrive, all the other worries of the day are put to the back of your mind. You congregate in the corner of the parking lot with the other surfers scanning the ocean for the swell. How are the waves? Are they ankle-slappers? Closed out? Is the wind off-shore? Who’s already out there? The surfers banter, retelling surf stories, sipping coffee and laughing. My mom can seldom chat too long before the ocean calls her. Then the ritual of putting on the wetsuit as quickly and gracefully as possible, and waxing up the board begins. Even on the days when there are no waves, even after it rains and the signs advise us not to swim, my mother cannot be stopped.

I am not hardcore like my mother, but I know enough to consider myself a fair-weather surfer. Like my mom, I always have had a deep love of the ocean. Little could keep me from jumping in if I arrived at the beach, even if it was January, even if I didn’t have a swimsuit. I had signed up for surf classes during college because I wanted to connect with mom through this love that had taken over her life, or more likely this love that had saved her life and pulled her steadily out of the pit of depression and grief.

I learned surfing is hard; it demands focus and dedication. The unglamourous part, paddling, is the hardest. You must develop strong back and core muscles. You must learn how to turn your board around quickly; you must learn to read the waves, how they are breaking, and when to start paddling. You must learn how to avoid crashing into other surfers, how to respect the line up. When you catch your first wave, you must learn how to pop up: to move in one fluid motion from laying flat on your stomach to standing on two feet, without ever going to your knees. You must learn balance. You must learn to how to fall safely, to search for your board so it doesn’t spring back and hit you. When big waves come you must learn to turtle roll, that is, roll the board upside down and hang on while the wave crashes over. Instruction is helpful but, practice, the trial and error padding into waves, standing and falling, is the only way to learn these fundamentals and the nature of the ocean.

Every surfer I know will tell you, that if you ever get into an argument with the ocean, the ocean will win. It is powerful. Surfers ride the edge of its great vastness simply longing for just one more wave. Maybe that is why surfers get the reputation of being laid back and chill—because they are daily made aware of something bigger than themselves, something more powerful. This ocean that has the ability to sweep away houses, to snap surfboards, to drowned swimmers, also allows us to paddle out and ride its surfaces, glide down the face of the waves. Surfers find their home in this thrill and the ecstasy is perhaps heightened by the risk and the understanding of their smallness and mortality. The great ocean gives immense, breathless, unconquerable joy to those willing to face fear, to challenge themselves, to try to walk on water.

On December 29, 2008—the seventh anniversary of my brother’s death—my mom and I went to the only place that made sense. The beach. Her surfer friends took us in their arms, hugged us, and accompanied us to the water even though there were hardly any waves. They knew this day was a special day for my mom and wanted to be there with us. As we approached such a burst of life took over the sea. Pelicans, dolphins, sea gulls, sand pipers, dove and bobbed in the high tide, so close to shore. There must have been a school of tasty fish. The ocean was frenzied, alive. Pelicans rode the lift off of the waves. Dolphins caught waves and slapped the surface with their tails. I could not contain myself, and though I didn’t have a wetsuit on I dove into freezing water. The ocean was alive and so was I. One of my mom’s friends lent me his board. My mom and I laughed and caught waves in awe of the majestic sea life that had come to visit as if to say Piper, Sean and Rose were thinking of us.

The story of this day is often re-told now during the early morning parking lot chat sessions, before everyone dons their wetsuits, and runs with their surfboard to the ocean.