While it’s now the end of September, each August I find a slew of surfing photos that come through my Facebook memories feed. I took my first surfing lesson August 2011 and the photo here was shot as I took the board out into the water at Rye, New Hampshire, for the first time, having no idea I’d actually get up on the board that day and it would open a new world to me.
A year later, I bought a surfboard, one custom made for me and my world continued to change. I had been divorced not long after that first surfing lesson and life moved me back to my hometown outside Chicago. But I found myself surfing in Hawaii and Australia that year. And when I bought the board, storing it in the garage of my friends Sam and Lois in LA, I also began to take more trips to LA. After Greg and I got together, we began to drive to LA from Albuquerque where I had returned to.
I learned so much from surfing, especially about taking on new challenges at age 40 and during the end of a relationship. I wasn’t ever good at surfing, but the times I caught waves and felt the board skim the top of the water all the way to the beach, can’t be matched.
However, somewhere in this time, I also had a shoulder injury (we aren’t sure if it was the day I was pulled down by my dog Gidget, yes, the irony of that one!, or the day my board whacked me in the shoulder at Manhattan Beach after a wave twisted me around in the surf). My shoulder began to pop out and when it happened one day as I was paddling to get in sync with a wave, I knew my surfing days were probably over.
The board came home to Albuquerque after Sam and Lois moved to assisted living and it’s now part of my living room decor. We use it occasionally in photos and I’m still hoping for the day that it will ride back to LA in the car and I’ll have a near waveless day in September where I can at least paddle out to the backside of those flat waves at RAT Beach in Palos Verdes and listen to the sound of the water as it hits the board.
I’m a better person because I took the chance on surfing. I read somewhere (and I can’t remember his name at the moment), but surfing person said, “Surfing recreates your life.”
It definitely did mine.