Butchblog

I woke up early yesterday so I could get out on the waves a couple hours before high tide. It was my birthday (81 if you must know) and I try to always get out there on that day, maybe just to prove to myself I still can. But also because I fucking love it. I bodyboard now; it’s easier on my arthritic frame, but I still get far enough off-shore to occasionally get the big ones, the steep drop. You know, the adrenalin rush. It makes me feel alive. Makes me forget whatever damn age I am and whatever damn thing is going on in the world.

            I had surfed when I was a young guy back in New Jersey. Yes, there’s surfing in New Jersey, even if the waves are not particularly fearsome. Unless a hurricane or a Nor’easter is on the way. When that happened we’d haul out the big boards and see how brave we really were. I loved being in the ocean. My family had been spending summers on Long Beach Island as long as I could remember. Eventually we bought a little cottage. I think my father had dreams of retiring there, but he died before that could happen. I always thought summer was the best time of the year; it was my release from the dreariness of Philadelphia and what I considered my dull, gray life. Summer was bright and vivid; it was when I was alive, when I was full of juice, when I was always barefoot and in the ocean for hours every day.

            At first, it was body surfing, which is a pretty exciting thing to do, if you know how to do it right. I was a good body surfer, knew just when to dive ahead of the wave to catch the best ride. It was thrilling to go rocketing into shore at what felt like a hundred miles an hour. You have to hold your position to get the best and longest ride, hands pointed out in front, body solid, and not lose that pose even when the wave crashes onto the beach.

            Surfboards didn’t come around till the early sixties (at least in New Jersey), and I couldn’t get my own board right then, because I didn’t have the cash. Mom and Dad did not approve of me wasting my money from summer jobs, money that I was supposed to be saving for college. I could have told them that I’d rather be a surfer than a college student, but that was not the kind of communication that would have proved beneficial to my well-being. If you were a Jewish boy, you went to college. Especially if your father was a doctor and had big hopes for you. Still I managed to do some surfing on borrowed boards, but not enough to get really good at it, and at the end of the summer of 1962, I went off to college in Ohio and didn’t much think of becoming a surfer again. Like Kesey said, “You’re either on the bus or you’re off.”

            I never did fulfill my family wishes for me. Was not a diligent college student. Probably missed more classes than I attended, and was in no way qualified to apply for medical school when I graduated, which was when my father pretty much gave up on me. Or maybe that happened earlier, when I told them I was going to change my major to English. “And do what?” Dad asked.

            “I don’t know,” I mumbled, “Teach maybe? Write?”

            Dad snorted and held his newspaper up in front of his face, which is what he always did when he was through with a conversation. After that, I hardly even went down the Shore anymore. Forgot about surfing. Eventually moved away to the West Coast, to Seattle. I still loved the ocean, though the waters off the Washington Coast were always jumbled and frigid, even in the summer time. All you could do was hold your breath and plunge in, then rush out before you developed hypothermia or got smashed onto a rock. Even body surfing was out of the question. And, anyway, I was raising a family by then, holding down a teaching job, struggling with an unhappy marriage. Being an adult. Feeling way older than my years. I’d forgotten about the joy of being in the ocean.

            Many years passed. Damn it all. And somehow, I never did get back to surfing. I was playing it safe. Or maybe that’s just another way to say I was scared. But scared of what? It wasn’t the ocean or the waves I feared, or even the cold. I knew about wet suits. Maybe I was worried I wouldn’t be able to cut it anymore, that I would look foolish and fall. Or that the real surfers would think I was too old to be on a board. Or maybe I was scared that my knees were too creaky now to get up. Yeah, all those things were going on, but I could have gotten past all that. What was really holding me back was the unshakeable, though deeply submerged, feeling that I didn’t deserve to enjoy myself. That surfing was self-indulgent, and that at my age (40ish!) I had to be serious, dignified. You never would have caught my father out surfing. How about this for a reason I didn’t go surfing all those years? I was a dumbass. And I can’t blame that on anybody but myself.

            But even dumbasses sometimes get a chance at redemption. On my 70th birthday, I rented a wetsuit and a board, and went surfing. For the first time in almost 50 years. And I loved it. All the old excitement was there, the adrenalin coursed through my veins, the best drug in the world. Of course, I fell that day way more than I got up, and probably the other surfers looked at me with a mixture of amusement and disdain, but I didn’t ever think about that; I was way too busy. It was only after I became so exhausted that I could no longer make another attempt and reluctantly paddled back to shore to my waiting wife and grown daughter, who were cheering me on, that I was able to think about what had just happened.

            Yes, I’d spent a couple hours in the ocean, felt pleasantly worn out, and pleased with myself; but there was something more going on. Something had shifted. I knew right away that I would keep on surfing, and also that I had finally reached a place where it was okay to do the kind of things I wanted to do, without judgement.

            Over the next 11 years, I came to realize that for me, surfing (and bodyboarding is surfing) could be an integral part of my life, and a metaphor that might keep me going for longer than I would have otherwise. Now that we live full-time by the Pacific, the first thing I do each morning is check out the waves and the tide table. If the surf looks promising, I quickly get on my wetsuit and go. Sometimes, Beverly comes with me. She worries about me, I know, but she still smiles and tells me to have a good time as she goes for a long walk on the beach while I play. She and I both know that what I’m doing is not safe. There are rip tides that could quickly pull me far away from shore. Most days there is no one around who I could even wave to. And I’ve wiped out plenty. Even yesterday on my birthday surf, a wave slammed me head-first off the front of my board. Still I tell Bev not to worry. If I’m going to go – well, there are worse ways.

            Surfing has become for me a touchstone for my later years. Being in the ocean, riding a hard-breaking wave, is my reminder to let go. There is nothing but right now, right here. I’ve never once, while surfing, had a thought about what I needed to do in the future, or what I should have done differently in the past. Once again, I am a happy, (though seriously aging) boy.