Chelle Summer

The Surfing Anniversary

Michelle Rusk

When I wrote about surfing and Bali last week– or the lack of surfing I did in Bali- wasn’t aware that twelve years ago today I surfed for the first time (in Rye, New Hampshire). And eleven years ago last week, I picked up my custom-made surfboard in Redondo Beach, CA.

These anniversaries, paired with my move to Albuquerque for graduate school in August 1994, sit in the back of my mind, but always come to the front when the calendar turns to August each year.

While I understand the significance of starting a new numerical year on January 1, for me, the most movement forward has always taken place as summer turns to fall. Some of it is obviously school related, but there is something about the fall that brings on new things in my life. Perhaps it’s because the start of school always meant new things– new clothes, new friends, new classes– and that has become a routine of sorts and carried through to the rest of my life.

But taking that surfing lesson in Rye on that August Saturday and getting my board a year later were part of sweeping changes of moving my life forward. The photo above also was taken in Rye although I believe in 2012. When I see those two girls (the daughters of a high school friend’s sister), they were to represent Denise and I and the significance of water in our sister relationship.

I have always written about the importance of the ocean and the Holiday Inn (usually!) swimming pool and how much time we spent in those places together. Surfing not only challenged me to do something new in my life as I was getting divorced and turned forty, it also gave me a different relationship with the water, specifically the ocean.

I wrote last week that I long be on the back side of the waves, listening to the water lap under my balsa wood board. I never would have had that without surfing. It has helped me form different relationships with places I have visited from Hawaii to Australia to Wale.

And it changed my relationship with God as a priest I knew started to call it “surfing with Jesus.”

I had no idea how much my life would change twelve years ago today when I took that chance on something I never ever thought I’d get to do my life. But I see now it helped me become closer not just to the person I want to be, but the person I’m supposed to be. I don’t get to surf at least for now, but I still get to keep forging forward and surfing has helped me do that.