I had one perfect day at the beach this summer.
I had two regulation other ones, the one with the dogs and the teenagers where I felt like their server and invisible, and the one with the visiting Austrians where I was hosting and making sure they went home loving America. Usually we go once a week. In a normal summer. But
This summer was too busy for long beach trips and also we never do long beach trips we do beach visits between yogurt, french fries and tacos surrounding the two hours at the beach.
Only Bess and Nathan and I could get to the beach. We thought it'd be cloudy. Or choppy or freezing. Like it was the last time. But this day was like a little triangle prism of light into a busy nonstop summer.
We wrestled on wetsuits. There were no dogs to worry about. For some reason I had to get right in the water. I even took the huge surfboard. I don't surf. But I do apparently.
I don't like being cold. That water is cold. But I walked in. I like any sport where you're barefoot and you can pee at any time.
The water tossed us all around, but who cares. This whole summer has tossed us all around. This whole summer we couldn't get our footing, There was no time to sit still. We had stuff to do.
The ocean was telling me this. As it tipped me over. I got on the huge board. I saw the surfers on the olympics. They made it look they were water waiters. Like walking on glass one second let me refill your ice water. I'll be right back.
I flopped onto the big board and felt wobbly like I was suspended 3000 feet in the air on a manhattan highwire act. you can't even slightly shift your weight or the board tells you hey you're a shitty surfer. Already. not even standing, just lying here flat. Just sayin
Ok I realized. Just lying on the board is the main step here. For me. At 58. In the ocean. I can lie on a tippy surfboard in these waves. Let's practice that.
So I practiced stabbing my board into the waves and letting them crash me in. I especially liked when the nose of the board would dip down and I'd fly off the front. It's so shallow in Ventura it's like surfing on a slip n slide really, but for some reason just lying on the board and feeling how insecure it is even at this basic level, that felt somehow amazing. Like just getting the very first step - impossibly hard! To feel confident.
But there's no one looking, I'm not in the semi finals, I can just enjoy this weird new thing. I did stand up on a board in my 20s and I did a few years ago for a few seconds. so I'm revisiting a sport that I know by passing wave, like I do with people at stop signs.
The day wasn't about trying to get better, really. It was about feeling released, in that water, with my two kids bobbing bobfosseing nearby. We were laughing and talking about our frozen hands, and looking for the next wave to surf or bodysurf. We were screaming and making bad jokes and bouncing and it felt like the real summer, like the water was our momma and we were lush in her wide trampoline body. We were safe. There was nowhere to be, until frozen yogurt. No one needed us. We could play, and learn things. This seems like the point of life.
I did get better at hoisting onto the board, tho wobbly, and I did get my knees up but didn't stand up yet.
We stayed in that water a long long time. The whole time. When we got out, we hung out on the sand only a bit and then made our traditional stacked up pyramid for a picture and then packed up and left.
I liked feeling like I belonged to some water and some kids, and some new skill. I liked that we were nowhere, and not good at it, and the sky was patient and no one was waiting for anything. We could just be until we were too cold to be being anymore and had to go do. We weren't a whole book, we were just a bookmark. That day. That happiness stayed with me for days.
I want to go back and I want to feel the water again like that. It's so hard to find the time, to clear the hours for doing something that makes no sense, no practical sense. I think that might be caretaker burnout, when you have a 24 hour job, you think you must always be on the job. Someone is needing you. That day helped remind me. I want to feel free and happy and idiotic. I have been feeling so impossibly lonely, for the life I love, that feels like this, feels like myself and my life.
And I want to try to stand up, even just for a second.
