Don't let fear get in the way - Why I Surf

Musings from a once reluctant surfer

When the tides are right, no matter if at the crack of dawn or at into the night, you will find me in the ocean.

It wasn’t always like this.

“This is a bait and switch” I resentfully told my husband when he took up surfing the year before. My oldest stepson picked up the sport and invited his Dad. Since James would never ever miss a chance to join one of his sons, for any reason, for whatever they asked him to do, he gleefully accepted. Suddenly, James made himself scarce on his free time. “You never surfed before, and now, overnight, you are a surf bum!”

“Do you want to spend more time together? I have a solution for you.” He responded.

If for a moment I hoped that his solution would be to surf less, I was sorely mistaken. Instead he said, “You can join me, you know. You may even like it.”

I stared him in the eye “No way” I said. I will never surf!”

The ocean always gave me the creeps, as generally situations where I can’t be in control tend to do. I learned how to swim as an adult, and going to deep, too far away from shore, to a place where I can’t swim back and feel the ground under my feet has always made me feel uncomfortable. Spending hours on a flimsy board in the middle of a turbulent ocean with freezing waters just didn’t seem like my idea of fun.

“Well, it’s your choice. But I, by the way, I" with an emphasis on the I, "will keep surfing.” James responded. And that was that. Until next time when I complained about it. But no matter, over the new few weeks, there he went surfing, and there I stayed home fuming.

I don’t recall quite how James worked out getting my boys wetsuits and extra boards. But a couple of weeks after that fight he invited my sons to join him on the waves. And what tween boy does not get excited about splashing in the water with the big boys on top of a bad-ass surfboard?

The boys came out the water, excited, exclaiming “Yippee! Let’s do this again!”

I realized I had lost.

I didn’t quite want to discourage the kids from surfing, but now not only the husband was absent, the kids would be too. Reluctantly, I joined them surfing.

The first couple of times were a disaster. We didn’t know then that surfing is a bit like skiing. Sure, one can ski if there is snow, but great skiing requires going on a great snow day, to the right ski resort based on one’s abilities and crowd tolerance. And so, it is with #surfing. There are waves practically all the time. But the good conditions require an alignment of the right #tides, #waves and #wind – and going to the right surf spot for one’s abilities.

For beginners – and generally around Santa Cruz – low tide is best. That’s when the waves are most consistent and form when the water hits the break. For me, there was an added advantage that for our surfing spots, we could stand up sometimes, which eased my fear of being swallowed by the big blue sea and gave me a sense of control. Most importantly though, at mid to higher tides, the waves break against the cliff walls that surround most of the Santa Cruz beaches. Not only that felt unsafe for me, but the water ricochets backs disturbing the wave, and making egress to and from the ocean more challenging.

But we did not know any of this then. First time I went surfing, it was during high tide. I fell over rocks trying to get out of the ocean, and almost felt the current pushing me towards the cliff walls. Then the waves were jumbled, and the ocean thrashed me around.

“Surfing sucks!” I said, coming out of the water scared.

“Surfing is great” my sons responded. So, I knew that this was not the last of it and surfing again we would.

We returned a second time, with the same outcome. I complained again, they dismissed my complaint and they started plotting going again.

So, I did what I do. I researched the best places to learn how to surf and got the family jetting to #Tofino, on the coast of British Columbia, dubbed the best surfing spot in North America for both beginners and experts.

Canada lodged itself in my heart. It is pristine and people are nice. Plus, Tofino not only had the surfing, but plenty of other mountains and sea related distractions to keep us busy only if I could yank the surfboard away from my family.

Once there, we visited a surf shop where a couple of 20-something surfing instructors were at the ready to help us out. They were drop dead gorgeous handsome and so totally surfer-cool that I didn’t want them teaching me – a middle aged woman scared of the ocean and my young children - how to surf. Almost by chance, we stumbled into the Surf Sisters. A surf shop ran by women, which made me think that they’d be just the right kind of people to teach me and my sons, then 9 and 12, how to do it right.

We got ourselves into some rented super tight wetsuits and overused foam boards and made our way to Chesterman Beach. Chesterman is a slice of Canadian paradise with interminable nice long beaches, not one rock in sight on the flat sandy bottom, with spruce trees surrounding it with the occasional eagle flying overhead. There was a smattering of surfers here and there, but we practically had the place to ourselves.

Chesterman Beach in Tofino, British Columbia at low tide

I remember two things from that lesson: when you fall, immediately protect your head. Then second that where you look is where you go. So… if you are looking down to the board, then you’d end up on the ocean. If you look forward, then you may go where you want to go.

We took on the whitewash. Both boys were up in literally less than 10 minutes.

Guess what happened to me?

I looked down. And as the Sisters said, “if you look down, you go down.” Go down I did.

Logan catching one of his first waves after a few minutes with his board

Yet, this was a surfing vacation, so the next day we were back at it. The Sisters were back at the beach with new apprentices and my boys were showing off to them how much better they got after a couple of hours of practice. As for me, I tossed and tumbled. At least I got a ton of practice on how to protect my head.

Every day as we exited the freezing ocean, the boys would rave about their day. I would add where I could “surfing sucks!”

“Mom, the problem is that you don’t try hard enough,” my youngest son, Logan, wiser than his years told me.

“I tried plenty hard!” I protested.

“Mom, you give up too quickly and you complain too much.”

Well, I never thought I lacked perseverance or tenacity, but my son wasn’t wrong. I needed an attitude adjustment if I wanted to keep surfing with my men who each day got better and better and started venturing out away from the whitewash into the green, while I was worried about protecting my head from my frequent falls.

Then my other son Adrian added: “Also, Mom, you don’t get up quick enough, you are holding the side of the board, you are looking down and you are too scared.”

At that moment, I gave up parenting my own child, and asked for help. “Show me!” I asked.

So, they did. It was not lost on me that I was getting schooled by my sons. I swallowed my pride. The occasion called for it.

On the 5th day, towards the end of a two-hour session I got up. It was glorious! At least during the few seconds that it lasted. My family congratulated me, high-fived me, and “great job mom” me.

“Maybe surfing doesn’t suck so much after all…” I said, with a big smile from my accomplishment and from all the praise the boys were reaping on me.

Then, our vacation came to an end. Back to surfing the rocky outposts of Santa Cruz we did.

And for over a year, I surfed with all my men – James and our four boys, seeing them mastering the sport little by little, which took them further and further away from me, still stuck on the whitewash, increasingly all by myself.

Still, it wasn’t all bad. The scenery was consistently beautiful, and we were spending time together – at least on the car rides there and hearing all the stories about how well they did that day on the car rides back.

I also slowly improved. I didn’t complain about surfing as much (although I still would let out “surfing sucks” often enough) but I certainly never initiated it. Often, I’d tried to get ahead of the men’s plans and would organize other outings for the family because having free time meant that we’d find ourselves on the ocean.

Then three things happened:

First was the lock down due to Covid. Suddenly we were not busy with team sports and band rehearsals and all the things that kept us busy on the weekends. My excuses to keep us away from the ocean suddenly dwindled. We simply had interminable free time. Plus, initially in the pandemic, the parks closed, robbing us of the opportunity to do the alternatives of hiking and mountain biking. While the beaches did close, the oceans never did: Santa Cruz allowed crossing the beaches to get to the ocean and suddenly, surfing was all there was.

Second, perhaps realizing that my wide beginner foam board was preventing me from improving more rapidly, James gifted me a narrower, 9 ft long foam board, which supposedly made catching waves and maneuvering easier.

Most consequentially, the day we went to inaugurate my new board, the surfing stars aligned. The conditions at Cowells Beach were as perfect as a POW day after a snowstorm. It was a negative tide day – the water level was so low that we could also see the beach – and all its rocks – making it safe and easy to get to and out of the surfing area. I could walk my board practically to where the wave broke, so there was no reason to fear the ocean and its force that day. Since I could stand up, that also meant I could time the waves which increased the likelihood of catching one. And the waves were perfect – not too big, but not so small that getting on them was a challenge.

Negative tide at Cowells Beach at sunrise, exposing the rocks and the cliff walls

“This is a pick-your-wave kind of day” I said excitedly as I crossed James in one of my first successful attempts.

And so, I got up. Then I got up again. And again. And again. Not only that, I could move around the wave, now that I had a narrower board.

At that moment, I finally understood.

I understood why surfers are obsessed with the ocean, why being a surf bum is a thing, and the respect and awe the ocean commanded for its power.

The combination of hearing the rush of the ocean, feeling the lift on my board, and getting up on a board and down a wave, all the way to the shore was something I wanted to experience again. Almost as soon as it ended, I went back for more. For two hours that day, I kept going until my arms and legs were too sore from paddling. I left the ocean happy. I was high-fiving with my boys and we were all plotting when we’d be back to ride some more.

Plot we did. I looked at the negative tide forecast for the whole summer and marked which days surfing would be consistently awesome with negative tides and planned all of our activities around that. So we surfed for five to six days straight over a two-week period, following the tide cycle. When summer ended, whenever work and school schedules allowed, we kept to that schedule too.

Initially, I only went when everybody else could go too.

However, one day on the summer of 2020 the ideal conditions with a negative 1.4 ft tide were at 5:30 a.m. James couldn’t join because he had a work meeting at 7 a.m. The boys wouldn’t join because they had no desire whatsoever to wake up before dawn.

Since I couldn't get myself to miss a perfect surfing day, I did what was once unthinkable.

I got up at 4:45 a.m. so that I’d get to the beach by 5:30 a.m. on my own. It was still dark when I first got into the water, yet, there were at least 30 people already surfing away. Initially, I struggled to see the waves due to the darkness. But soon enough the sun rose turning the sky pink and purple. Light started streaming through. The water had a wide ribbon with a reddish reflection from the rising sun. Seagulls and pelicans were flying overhead, and the fish swimming underneath and along side my board.

At that moment, I felt so grateful to be alive, that James took up surfing, that the boys taught me how to do it, and that I lived in a beautiful spot that gave me a chance to surf at the crack of dawn. There I was, seeing the sun rise from my board, catching wave after wave, until exhausted and elated, I got myself out of the water to start my workday on time.