Monday, October 6, 2008

One Perfect Wave

I love to surf. It may be the one thing that just never, ever lets me down. Whether I catch a wave or no, it just brings joy.
When I moved to California, I had myself a borrowed surf board and a too-small scuba suit to go out in within days. I managed to fineigle the surfing essentials out of some older, native Californians on the LA Times staff in Ventura. I surfed a couple of times a week for years. It took me a long time to get off, and I still can't call myself a great surfer. But life is good when you are out on a surf board.

Since kids it has been harder. I live too far away from the ocean. It is hard to add a surfboard to the mountain of necessities I already need to lug down to the sand for my two boys--food, towels, umbrella, sand toys, sunblock, water, shoes, and often, the boys themselves.

I only surfed twice last year--once with Natalie off the spit in Bolinas (perfect break, all to myself!) and once in Ventura, with Jonathan.

This whole summer went by and I never got on a board once, though I did some awesome boogie boarding, and even got my head inside the green room once--a first for me!

But we went out to Leo Carrillo this weekend to go camping with our favorite adventuring family--the Marcos. We camped, told stories, roasted s'mores, and on Sunday morning I got to head out into the surf on my board. The waves were huge--intimidatingly huge for someone who had not been out for a year and a half. The entry was rocky and rough. You had to walk across a hundred feet of barnacly rocks you couldn't see while waves crashed and your board got thrown around and pulled you over.

Then, the best spot at Leo Carrillo, where all the real hard-core surfers take off, is a narrow spot between a mountain of jagged rocks. The hotshots take off right behind them and surf within feet of these sharp outcroppings. Some of them you can't even see. As I was about to get in half a surfboard washed up on shore--without a rider. It felt like a bad omen. (The guy, who eventually floated in, said he had to throw the board onto the rocks to save himself) But we had lugged the board out to Malibu, with the straps whistling for 60 miles. I was determined to go out, no matter how scary it was.

So I paddled out, with my little team of Theo, Benji, Jonathan, Violet, Vivian and Jill all watching from the beach. Jill wanted me to surf to inspire her amazing girls. How could I let them down???? It took me forever to get out. I almost got decapitated a few times by some crazy shortboarders. The rocks scared me. I didn't know the terrain. And legends of mean local surfers in Malibu kept running through my head. By the time I got out to the lineup I was so tired I didn't even know if I had the strength to paddle for a wave.

I kept paddling and missing and getting thrashed, and I even bonked a good surfer on the head with my board, but he was cool. Finally, an old dude on a board gave me the tip of the day. Paddle hard, he said. You have to get on it when it is really, really steep. It has to look like it is breaking on top of you. These are the scariest waves to ride, but I knew he was right.

The weirdest thing is, although I never knew it, I guess facing towards the wave, riding the wave, diving into the wave, are all metaphors in Buddhism, and gestalt therapy. At least in the gestalt and Buddhism my friend Natalie practiced, and the books on Buddhism I have been reading since her death. The idea is, even if something huge is coming, you have to face it head on. You have to look at it, know what you are up against, and dive through it. And, of course, you have to give into the wave on some level, and let it carry you--whether you are riding it, or trying to get to the other side. When Natalie was going in and out at the end, she kept saying, I can't ride the wave. I thought she was talking to me because we had surfed and boogie boarded together, but Chris said it was a gestalt thing...

Anyway, these thoughts kept running through my head out there. I have to go through the wave. I have to ride the wave. I am scared to wait until the wave is on top of me over a rocky bottom, but if I don't have faith, I will never ride a wave here, today, on my one day of surfing for 2008. I got on my knees a few times, and the waves were so fast I was startled. But I remembered the old dude's words. A big wave came and I got right under it, in the position where you must commit or you will be thrashed beyond belief. I paddled. I was scared, but I was committed. And I took off, and it was perfect. It was one of the most perfect, longest waves I have ever ridden. I went up the wave, then down, then up, then down. Time slowed down. It was just me on top of the wave. There is nothing like it. I rode as far as I could--I didn't want it to end. I turned and my whole posse of supporters had seen it. I was glad, because I didn't know when I would get a wave like that again.

And here is the amazing thing about a perfect wave: it sticks in your mind. You can hold it. You can hold the complete experience, and play it over and over again and still feel it--what it is like to have the water under your feet, heading towards shore, going up and down the wave. For me there is no other physical thing like that...

I didn't get another wave like that. It was my one perfect wave. But what a lesson. You do need to commit in life. You just have to go, you have to take off and commit. You can't think about what is going to happen if you fall, and you get tangled in your leash on top of a bed of barnacly rocks. Because if you do not commit 100% and believe that that wave will carry you, you cannot ride it. So I am holding that feeling today--not just the joy of the wave. But that memory--that I have to commit to those things that scare me. And if I don't go all out, they simply cannot happen.

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