Treading Water
When I was twelve, my parents gave me my first real surfboard, which, come to think of it, was actually Santa Claus’ present. Before that, I had been “surfing” on one of the boogie boards that were stacked in the storage room behind our house and were shared among all cousins. Naturally, this was the best day of my life, I finally had the tools necessary to become one of those surfers I idolized in magazines I browsed over and over again until the pages turned to onionskin and the pictures so translucent it looked as if all of them were surfing one single wave. My board was a 6’2” thruster with a gradient color that went from a deep purple on the tail to coral on the nose and sported a tribal mask sticker -it wasn’t long until the tiki mask was joined by the MTV logo and the Rolling Stones’ mouth and tongue. Santa Claus had even gone to the trouble of waxing the board, so all that was left for me to do was to paddle out, and make sure the girls were watching. But it was precisely the “paddling out” part that I had never taken into consideration, and what a significant role it turned to have.
The day I went surfing for the first time, my father joined my brother, my cousin and me on the attempt. We stood ashore, my brother’s board was bright yellow with a black “R” stamped on the nose in a typeface that could be found on any hardcore biker’s tattoo; my cousin’s board was far more menacing, hers exhibited a lime horned demon-like figure along the deck. Purple and coral (it was pink) never looked so girly. My father’s supervision was required as this was the first time we would venture past the break, that magical sea-land where the big sets with wild open faces we watched from the oceanfront could be conquered and tamed by our fiberglass swords. Since foam boogie boards had never been able to take us there before, we’d had to settle with cruising the remains of waves that rolled all the way down to the shallows.
Desperately we strapped on and started paddling out while my father walked in, water barely reaching his hip. The first swell hit me like a cool breeze on a sunny morning, washing away all my worries; the second one gave me a clear taste of the salty water, I licked my lips with pride and resumed head-on, success was within my grasp. Then the water stood still, I smirked awkwardly because my arms were already tired by that point, but there was nothing to worry about, I could see the finish line, the open sea where all the riches awaited. Of course, it was then when “the set” hit me. I was launched off the board like a rock released from a trebuchet, and down I went. Wave after wave, like a pair of dirty boxers or a dirty Martini, I was shaken, stirred and finished off with salt in my olives. I didn’t know which way was up or down, left or right; all I knew (and this time I was certain of it) was that I was drowning. I paddled as hard as I could trying to reach what I thought was the surface, but as it usually goes in life, it was only when the water was done with me that it pushed me out. Probably less than thirty seconds had passed but my body’s first reaction when coming out wasn’t to breathe but to vomit all the water it had swallowed. I was stunned, too frightened to shriek, too embarrassed to weep; only for a second had God pressed his finger on me and it had sufficed to show me the stakes of life. My heart thumped against my rib cage as if wanting to escape a body that had proven wanting, like a crab that abandons its shell in search of safer housing. I was frail and my heart knew it.
With the waves gone, the sea retreating to a foamy carpet, I clenched my teeth to prevent my heart from coming out of my mouth, got on my board and paddled out way past the breaking point. There, on the silent platitudes of the other side, I sat down and sighed with a relief that must’ve been heard in the entire seabed. Slowly I drifted into a place inside my mind where I had never been before, a place in which the sound of my thoughts was overcome by the water running up and down my board, embracing my legs and body as it flowed. Needless to say, every wave went unsurfed that day, at least by me. All I did was stay in silence watching the waves go by, wondering how it was possible that such a peaceful place could exist right on the backside of such an unruly, frightening, and deeply consequential world. I suppose true solitude, the one where you can lose yourself in contemplation, not to escape but to reach as deep inside as possible, is an enterprise in and of itself, one that is attained through effort, determination and a few too many scares.
To this day, every time I paddle past any break, an ordeal that hasn’t gotten any easier, I can feel the warm embrace of a physical and mental state that’s earned by paddling into a sometimes calm, others devastating immensity that could only be compared to the one within ourselves. I hope there’s a parallel to be drawn between my anecdote and the contemplative ocean we sometimes navigate in our lives, but maybe it’s just a story about a frightful kid that yearns for peace in his lonely world. In any case, paddle away.
