We wore old hand-me-down wetsuits from an older brother who used to scuba-dive. Two piece. Pants that came up to just under the armpits, and a beaver-tail top over that. They called them beaver-tail because of the rubber flap that hung down the back of the top was supposed to wrap over your ass, around your crotch, and then fasten to the front-side bottom of the top to create a singular unit. But because the fasteners were protruding metal buckles that would dig into the deck of the board, surfers who wore the suits left them un-buckled, the back flap dangling off their asses, like a...beaver-tail.
My brother's wetsuit had a busted zipper. In those days the zippers were metal instead of plastic and over time they would corrode with green crud until they stopped working and/or the teeth started falling out. Being of limited budgets--as teenagers who had saved our meager $.50/hr baby-sitting wages over the course of the previous winter to buy our boards--there was nothing left over for real surfing wetsuits. So my brother held the top of his suit, sorta closed, by flapping one side over the other and tying two lengths of bungee cord, one around his chest, the other his waist. Ghetto.
The suits themselves, while providing some measure of warmth against the frigid Maine water, were leaky, stiff with dry-rot, and 1/4 thick. Akin to trying to surf in a straight-jacket I would imagine. Compounding the lack of flexibility, which is pretty much everything to a surfer, they used to chafe, raw and bloody, every folding part of the anatomy. Necks, crotch, back of the knees, insides of the elbows...but worst, the most crucial hinge for a surfer, his/her paddling armpits!
In those days, Mommies and Daddies didn't cart their kids around to all their activities, in SUV's and mini-vans. So for me and my brother, it was a two-mile trek to, and another two miles back again, from our local spot. And depending on the tide, we would either be paddling across a tidal river, hiking over the dunes, then another mile of walking the beach, or...walking the whole damn way across the beach, dunes, and the tidally drained river! Oh my god, the memories of waddling across the sand after a 3 hour session, every step, or every stroke (if we were paddling,) rubbing and stripping layer after layer of epidermis away, salt water stinging like novacaine in the exposed wounds...
The other thing we didn't have in those days...sunscreen. Nobody had ever heard of skin-cancer, sunblock, or spf's. And as we were a clan descended from pale skinned, Irish and Swedish stock, we...burned. Me especially. I was the lucky recipient of the palest, non-tan-able flesh in my family. Burn and peel. Burn and peel. But these weren't burns of the mere, "lobster-red," 1st degree variety. No, 2nd degree, blistering, stinging, pus oozing, sloughing off flesh swaths of sun-seared cheeks, nose, and lips. As "Lost in Space's," "Dr. Smith" used to whine: "Oh the pain! The pain!"
Zinc-oxide. White war-paint. You'd see some surfers with little dabs of the white goo on the tips of their noses. Not me. As my mother realized it was a futile endeavor to try to reason or even forbid me from heading out into the blazing sun yet again with my board under my arm, she insisted, (and I relented out of the sheer agony of thrashing in my bed at night suffering those burns) that I slather it across my entire face as if I were some aboriginal war-child in some forgotten Papua New Guinean jungle.
Other surfers, the older ones used to make fun of me and my white-face and blistering skin. But I suffered their ridicule. Nothing...not my mom, not the hottest star in the galaxy, or even some snickering older surfer would deter me from being in the water, on my board. Chafed, or burned, or chafed, and burned didn't matter; only the waves, only the rides...ah, the memories of youth!
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Ghost Waves
Waves are ephemeral by nature. Spawned by wind and storms, bands of energy travelling through a liquid expanse. Drawing on sandbar or reef or wrapping 'round a point, toppling, crumbling, or heaving, dependant on the bottom configuration, they break, sometimes gloriously, rumble shorewards and expire, their remnant wash filming back down the sand, over cobblestones, or simply blasted into vapor against a rock face...
Surfers plan, scheme, google, and travel...lotsa travel, by car mostly, sometimes plane or boat. They hunt and search and pray to be in the right spot at the right time, to ride these energy bands, breaking as ephemeral waves...
Given the ever growing number of surfers world-wide, you might think that most of these waves get ridden. Watch a Malibu, Pipeline, or J-Bay line-up on any good swell and you'll rarely see a wave roll through unmolested. Yet, most waves do break and tumble, plunge, or crumble, not only unridden, but unseen...
There are numerous spots around the globe where surfers congregate, places where the best waves break with enough frequency to keep an indigenous tribe close-by, ready to plunder. The number of unknown spots is rapidly dwindling, and the more nomadic surfers have to travel further into the wildeness to find them. But not often discussed, are ghost waves. Waves breaking so ephemerally that you can't even label them as legitimate spots. Waves where for a fleeting moment, perhaps only one set, or even a single wave, when all the variables come into alignment, at a spot that normally goes unconsidered, that spirit their brief existence without notice or acclaim...
Occasionally, a surfer might glimpse one of these waves, while driving to a more known spot. Their brakes may squeal as they stop to witness...and usually wait to see if there are more. Most times you drive away, passing off what you've just seen as mirage... Yet you usually catalogue the image away, and you keep driving by this spot, sometimes for years, waiting, hoping to see it go off...dreaming that maybe, someday you'll paddle out and catch one...
I submit here, three such ghost waves, breaking in three completely different spots, yet all within the same mile long stretch of a well known surf locale... In my 38 years of surfing in this area I've never seen anyone surf at these spots, never seen them break quite like this... Yet on this day, here they are, or were...
Maybe, just maybe...if I keep checking...
Surfers plan, scheme, google, and travel...lotsa travel, by car mostly, sometimes plane or boat. They hunt and search and pray to be in the right spot at the right time, to ride these energy bands, breaking as ephemeral waves...
Given the ever growing number of surfers world-wide, you might think that most of these waves get ridden. Watch a Malibu, Pipeline, or J-Bay line-up on any good swell and you'll rarely see a wave roll through unmolested. Yet, most waves do break and tumble, plunge, or crumble, not only unridden, but unseen...
There are numerous spots around the globe where surfers congregate, places where the best waves break with enough frequency to keep an indigenous tribe close-by, ready to plunder. The number of unknown spots is rapidly dwindling, and the more nomadic surfers have to travel further into the wildeness to find them. But not often discussed, are ghost waves. Waves breaking so ephemerally that you can't even label them as legitimate spots. Waves where for a fleeting moment, perhaps only one set, or even a single wave, when all the variables come into alignment, at a spot that normally goes unconsidered, that spirit their brief existence without notice or acclaim...
Occasionally, a surfer might glimpse one of these waves, while driving to a more known spot. Their brakes may squeal as they stop to witness...and usually wait to see if there are more. Most times you drive away, passing off what you've just seen as mirage... Yet you usually catalogue the image away, and you keep driving by this spot, sometimes for years, waiting, hoping to see it go off...dreaming that maybe, someday you'll paddle out and catch one...
I submit here, three such ghost waves, breaking in three completely different spots, yet all within the same mile long stretch of a well known surf locale... In my 38 years of surfing in this area I've never seen anyone surf at these spots, never seen them break quite like this... Yet on this day, here they are, or were...
Maybe, just maybe...if I keep checking...
Friday, January 20, 2012
'59 Mo
This morning, I wake up slowly, feeling the stiffness in my body, 'specially my arthritic knees...I stumble to the kitchen, start a pot of tea, then shuffle to the bathroom...feelin O.L.D. I work with the elderly, so on mornings like this, it reminds me what's coming...and I wonder: How many more days do I got before someone's helping me with my A.D.L's (activities of daily living)? Should they start sizing me for Depends? Should I put a down-payment on a walker?
I sip the tea and check in on my computer stuff. Later, I'm off to do some grocery shopping. Somewhere in the mid-morning, a feel some of the stiffness, the sluggishness, sloughing off...my body is warming up, like an old car that takes awhile...I'm a '59 Mo model...you do the math.
And as the day progresses, I start feeling pretty good, actually. I start planning my workout, start thinking about my dreams and aspirations, start feeling a little less creaky and more Carpe Diem. And it occurs to me...yes, I'm older...middle-aged in fact...my chassis is banged up and I've suffered my share of dings and scrapes...but my slow starting engine, my engine is still pretty darn good...once it gets up to speed...I've taken pretty good care of the engine...
So, I may not be the shiniest, sportiest car on the lot these days, and though I have alot of both good and hard miles behindl...I'm still running strong...and I still got miles to go, good miles, yet left in me...before they haul my broke-down ass off to the scrap yard...
I'm a '59 Mo model...a classic...
I sip the tea and check in on my computer stuff. Later, I'm off to do some grocery shopping. Somewhere in the mid-morning, a feel some of the stiffness, the sluggishness, sloughing off...my body is warming up, like an old car that takes awhile...I'm a '59 Mo model...you do the math.
And as the day progresses, I start feeling pretty good, actually. I start planning my workout, start thinking about my dreams and aspirations, start feeling a little less creaky and more Carpe Diem. And it occurs to me...yes, I'm older...middle-aged in fact...my chassis is banged up and I've suffered my share of dings and scrapes...but my slow starting engine, my engine is still pretty darn good...once it gets up to speed...I've taken pretty good care of the engine...
So, I may not be the shiniest, sportiest car on the lot these days, and though I have alot of both good and hard miles behindl...I'm still running strong...and I still got miles to go, good miles, yet left in me...before they haul my broke-down ass off to the scrap yard...
I'm a '59 Mo model...a classic...
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Da Old Crew
Some had established nicknames like, Surfer Crow and Fearless Fred; for the rest, my brother and I invented nicknames. Cheeks, The Bolt, Surfboards Australia, The Red-headed Freak, The Indian...
The established local crew were mostly older; yet only a few years older, late teens or early twenties. Still, they seemed to us, wisened old masters; they had the Rivermouth wired. We were beginners, "gremmies," and as such in the social hierarchal ways of that era, they did not deign us acknowledgement in the water, let alone, speak to us. It was a big day in my surfing life when the best of them, The Bolt, did say something to me that day, in maybe my third summer of surfing. I rushed home to inform my brother that: "The Bolt talked to me!" He'd complimented one of my rides, then advised angling my take-off on the really walled up waves. But what mattered was that he'd seen one of my rides! I was no longer invisible; I had a place in the line-up and had become one them, a local!
Eventually I got to know all of the crew, and their real names. Even socialized a bit out of the water. Shared some epic days and waves, lottsa laughs; it felt good to be one of them. Surfers from other places would often complain that the Rivermouth was too crowded and localized. But I always thought our crew was pretty mellow. There wasn't alot of yelling and fighting. You had to earn your place in the line-up before you got many waves but they were all pretty accepting of non-locals, as long as they weren't douchebags. I know when I would go down to surf the pointbreaks in New Hampshire it was much more cut-throat and intimidating if you weren't a local down there. I'll never forget the guy who dropped in on me at Rye-on-the-Rocks who swung his forearm back at me and knocked me off my board...that kind of stuff just didn't happen at the Rivermouth.
In those days, you could tell who was out from up in the parking lot, just by watching. Everyone had their own style and you recognized their cars and boards and especially how they surfed. And at my spot, locals always outnumbered the interlopers...
It's not like that now. Clones. The line-up is cluttered with clones. Clear-white, potato-chip tri-fins or quads. Young dudes trying to get air; no style, the wave as mere vert-ramp. Or pudgy middle-aged longboarders who took up the sport cuz the "life-style" fit their mid-life crisis and looked cool in that tv car ad. Nowdays the line-up is cluttered with more kids and girls; when I started there were almost neither of those demographics. And they're coming from all over, Massachussetts, New Jersey, Montreal (VANloads of Montrealers!) all drawn here because Surfline and Google Earth told them it was one of the East Coast's best waves (which it is, but people, it's still the frikkin EAST Coast!) And SUPS...don't even get me started about SUPS...yeah, that wass a good idea, lets include into the mix big clunky, unwieldy barges ridden by mostly beginners who have no clue about wave dynamics or lineup etiquette...yeah, right...
Most days now I paddle out at the Rivermouth, I'm the only "local" in the water. 'Cept for the younger crew, some of the hot up-and-comers, I'm the only one of the old crew left. Strange faces all around me, some of them even giving stink-eye, as if they rule the break and I'M the outsider! This summer during the hurricane Irene swell, I paddled out on a bodyboard because I'd been having really bad back spasms that prevented me from popping up to my feet on my surfboard. So I figured it was either sit on the beach and cry while the best swell of the year passed me by, or get out in the water any way I could. I chose the latter; read my profile handle, I embrace the ancient Hawaiian credo of being more than just a surfer but a total waterwoman. After I outmaneuvered some twenty-something punk for one of the set waves, I kicked back to the line-up only to have him scowl at me and mutter: "This isn't a beginner spot!" Mr. Tough-Guy paddled away before I could retort...
I miss the old crew. Most of the older ones don't even surf anymore. Bad-backs, hip-replacements, substance abuse, etc. Some have moved on to more wave-rich locales, long ago. But even my contemporaries, go mostly AWOL during all the minor wave days. They only pull their boards out of the back of their pick-ups during major swells, and often times, they still dominate the line-up. Even the young hot-shots, will huddle together and demure them the best set waves. But those days when da old crew, when my old crew is out there charging again, are getting fewer and farther between. Makes me a little sad...
Now I've got my own issues...bad back, bad knees, arthritis, and a lot more subcutaneous tissue around the middle than I'd prefer. I can't surf nearly as well as I used to. Don't even own a 6'2" 2.5 inch thick thruster anymore. And though the line-up is a sometimes lonely place for me these days, I still get buzzed after a good ride. I still like coming hard off the bottom and sling-shotting out onto a long wall...I'd like to think that though it will hurt when and if that day I can no longer push and stumble my way to my feet, that I won't simply give up and call it a career. My love is too deep...isn't it? Hell, if I'm reduced to a bodyboard or even a...(holding my nose!) SUP, I'd like to think I'll still be out there, in the water, still smiling, cuttin off all the young punks who think they own the break, still stumblin up the beach after a session, salt-water draining from my nasal passages, still, surfing still...a surfer!
The established local crew were mostly older; yet only a few years older, late teens or early twenties. Still, they seemed to us, wisened old masters; they had the Rivermouth wired. We were beginners, "gremmies," and as such in the social hierarchal ways of that era, they did not deign us acknowledgement in the water, let alone, speak to us. It was a big day in my surfing life when the best of them, The Bolt, did say something to me that day, in maybe my third summer of surfing. I rushed home to inform my brother that: "The Bolt talked to me!" He'd complimented one of my rides, then advised angling my take-off on the really walled up waves. But what mattered was that he'd seen one of my rides! I was no longer invisible; I had a place in the line-up and had become one them, a local!
Eventually I got to know all of the crew, and their real names. Even socialized a bit out of the water. Shared some epic days and waves, lottsa laughs; it felt good to be one of them. Surfers from other places would often complain that the Rivermouth was too crowded and localized. But I always thought our crew was pretty mellow. There wasn't alot of yelling and fighting. You had to earn your place in the line-up before you got many waves but they were all pretty accepting of non-locals, as long as they weren't douchebags. I know when I would go down to surf the pointbreaks in New Hampshire it was much more cut-throat and intimidating if you weren't a local down there. I'll never forget the guy who dropped in on me at Rye-on-the-Rocks who swung his forearm back at me and knocked me off my board...that kind of stuff just didn't happen at the Rivermouth.
In those days, you could tell who was out from up in the parking lot, just by watching. Everyone had their own style and you recognized their cars and boards and especially how they surfed. And at my spot, locals always outnumbered the interlopers...
It's not like that now. Clones. The line-up is cluttered with clones. Clear-white, potato-chip tri-fins or quads. Young dudes trying to get air; no style, the wave as mere vert-ramp. Or pudgy middle-aged longboarders who took up the sport cuz the "life-style" fit their mid-life crisis and looked cool in that tv car ad. Nowdays the line-up is cluttered with more kids and girls; when I started there were almost neither of those demographics. And they're coming from all over, Massachussetts, New Jersey, Montreal (VANloads of Montrealers!) all drawn here because Surfline and Google Earth told them it was one of the East Coast's best waves (which it is, but people, it's still the frikkin EAST Coast!) And SUPS...don't even get me started about SUPS...yeah, that wass a good idea, lets include into the mix big clunky, unwieldy barges ridden by mostly beginners who have no clue about wave dynamics or lineup etiquette...yeah, right...
Most days now I paddle out at the Rivermouth, I'm the only "local" in the water. 'Cept for the younger crew, some of the hot up-and-comers, I'm the only one of the old crew left. Strange faces all around me, some of them even giving stink-eye, as if they rule the break and I'M the outsider! This summer during the hurricane Irene swell, I paddled out on a bodyboard because I'd been having really bad back spasms that prevented me from popping up to my feet on my surfboard. So I figured it was either sit on the beach and cry while the best swell of the year passed me by, or get out in the water any way I could. I chose the latter; read my profile handle, I embrace the ancient Hawaiian credo of being more than just a surfer but a total waterwoman. After I outmaneuvered some twenty-something punk for one of the set waves, I kicked back to the line-up only to have him scowl at me and mutter: "This isn't a beginner spot!" Mr. Tough-Guy paddled away before I could retort...
I miss the old crew. Most of the older ones don't even surf anymore. Bad-backs, hip-replacements, substance abuse, etc. Some have moved on to more wave-rich locales, long ago. But even my contemporaries, go mostly AWOL during all the minor wave days. They only pull their boards out of the back of their pick-ups during major swells, and often times, they still dominate the line-up. Even the young hot-shots, will huddle together and demure them the best set waves. But those days when da old crew, when my old crew is out there charging again, are getting fewer and farther between. Makes me a little sad...
Now I've got my own issues...bad back, bad knees, arthritis, and a lot more subcutaneous tissue around the middle than I'd prefer. I can't surf nearly as well as I used to. Don't even own a 6'2" 2.5 inch thick thruster anymore. And though the line-up is a sometimes lonely place for me these days, I still get buzzed after a good ride. I still like coming hard off the bottom and sling-shotting out onto a long wall...I'd like to think that though it will hurt when and if that day I can no longer push and stumble my way to my feet, that I won't simply give up and call it a career. My love is too deep...isn't it? Hell, if I'm reduced to a bodyboard or even a...(holding my nose!) SUP, I'd like to think I'll still be out there, in the water, still smiling, cuttin off all the young punks who think they own the break, still stumblin up the beach after a session, salt-water draining from my nasal passages, still, surfing still...a surfer!
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Log Lady
Glaring omission in my current quiver: a longboard. I want..no, I NEED a longboard. Though I've been surfing for nearly 38 years now, I don't consider myself a complete surfer. When I started this odyssey, it was already a few years post "shortboard revolution." The "Bustin Down The Door crew were my heroes, Shaun, MR, Rabbit, et al. Nobody, at least nobody cool and happening, still rode a longboard. And when they did start to filter back into the lineup, I grumbled, along with most other shortboarders, that they were simply wave catching machines for fat, old, lesser skilled kooks. I was probably the last holdout in my local lineup until the '90's when it seemed everyone who wasn't eighteen and under delusions that they could surf the little "potato-chip" thrusters of the era like Kelly, was on a log. Resistence was futile; I assimilated.
I'd been shaping and glassing my own boards for only a year less than I'd been surfing. And though I was completely self-taught, and made more than a few dogs along the way, I felt confident enough in my skills to give it a go; I shaped myself a longboard. But as I first set planer to blank, my confidence went out the window; so many variables in a blown-up shape, so many to screw up. I overthought, and hence, over-shaped that first longboard. In fact, dissatisfied with how the rocker was coming along, I kept re-shaping until I'd thinned the board too much and the "log" I'd intended, evolved into a "high-performance" longboard. Yet, after glassing it, and riding it, I found that I'd created a pretty good wave-catching machine. And for awhile, it was my board of choice; I found I could compete with all the kooks out there who had been catching all the waves, and "just standing there!" again. In fact, I was soon paddling around them and catching more than my share of waves. I started to earn stink-eyes from the young shortboarders. I inwardly smiled and disdained them as "using the wrong tool for the job" in gutless surf. But though the board road well, it wasn't what I'd started out to create; it wasn't a classic log. It wasn't a very good nose-rider; it was too thin and narrow a platform for the effective and graceful cross-stepping ballet I'd envisioned. I got bored.
I decided I would try again. Ordered a new blank. Only they shipped the wrong blank; an 8'7." And instead of complaining, I figured I'd make lemonade out of a lemon. A mini-mal. But again, I overthought it; made it more progressive with chine-rails in the nose, and 60/40 rails instead of the 50/50 I'd originally planned. Still, it was thicker, and wider; and it enabled a better platform for walking the nose. Plus I made it a nice candy-apple red with an inlay on the deck of red Hawaiian hibiscus flowers. It was pretty. But last year, out of a need to raise funds for a major surgery, I reluctantly Craigslisted it, along with half the rest of my quiver. Cried when I sold it to some newbie woman who was learning to surf so she could spend more time with her husband. Wished her good waves and fun as I watched their mini-van drive off from the Walmart parking lot where we'd met.
Flash forward, it's been over a year now...I've retooled my quiver by stripping down a few of my old boards (Frankenboards I call them) and reincarnating them into new shapes; my original longboard was cut down to a 7'6" tri-plane hull type shape; it rides frikkin awesome! But I no longer possess a longboard. Recently, after watching the graceful surfing of some of the top pro women longboarders on YouTube, I've come to realize, I NEED a log! And a real log this time. Wide round nose, 50/50 rails, a little kick in the tail, malibu style fin...and NO leash plug (there is something inherently wrong, very wrong about wearing a kook cord on a longboard!) I want to master the art, not just stand there, of log riding. Toes over, cross-stepping, balletic...I want, no, NEED to be a complete surfer...a log lady...
I'd been shaping and glassing my own boards for only a year less than I'd been surfing. And though I was completely self-taught, and made more than a few dogs along the way, I felt confident enough in my skills to give it a go; I shaped myself a longboard. But as I first set planer to blank, my confidence went out the window; so many variables in a blown-up shape, so many to screw up. I overthought, and hence, over-shaped that first longboard. In fact, dissatisfied with how the rocker was coming along, I kept re-shaping until I'd thinned the board too much and the "log" I'd intended, evolved into a "high-performance" longboard. Yet, after glassing it, and riding it, I found that I'd created a pretty good wave-catching machine. And for awhile, it was my board of choice; I found I could compete with all the kooks out there who had been catching all the waves, and "just standing there!" again. In fact, I was soon paddling around them and catching more than my share of waves. I started to earn stink-eyes from the young shortboarders. I inwardly smiled and disdained them as "using the wrong tool for the job" in gutless surf. But though the board road well, it wasn't what I'd started out to create; it wasn't a classic log. It wasn't a very good nose-rider; it was too thin and narrow a platform for the effective and graceful cross-stepping ballet I'd envisioned. I got bored.
I decided I would try again. Ordered a new blank. Only they shipped the wrong blank; an 8'7." And instead of complaining, I figured I'd make lemonade out of a lemon. A mini-mal. But again, I overthought it; made it more progressive with chine-rails in the nose, and 60/40 rails instead of the 50/50 I'd originally planned. Still, it was thicker, and wider; and it enabled a better platform for walking the nose. Plus I made it a nice candy-apple red with an inlay on the deck of red Hawaiian hibiscus flowers. It was pretty. But last year, out of a need to raise funds for a major surgery, I reluctantly Craigslisted it, along with half the rest of my quiver. Cried when I sold it to some newbie woman who was learning to surf so she could spend more time with her husband. Wished her good waves and fun as I watched their mini-van drive off from the Walmart parking lot where we'd met.
Flash forward, it's been over a year now...I've retooled my quiver by stripping down a few of my old boards (Frankenboards I call them) and reincarnating them into new shapes; my original longboard was cut down to a 7'6" tri-plane hull type shape; it rides frikkin awesome! But I no longer possess a longboard. Recently, after watching the graceful surfing of some of the top pro women longboarders on YouTube, I've come to realize, I NEED a log! And a real log this time. Wide round nose, 50/50 rails, a little kick in the tail, malibu style fin...and NO leash plug (there is something inherently wrong, very wrong about wearing a kook cord on a longboard!) I want to master the art, not just stand there, of log riding. Toes over, cross-stepping, balletic...I want, no, NEED to be a complete surfer...a log lady...
Monday, January 2, 2012
Dichotomy of the Maine surfer
Big 'n junky
Clean n' Tiny
My dad used to say of political elections: "It does't usually come down to the choice between good or bad, but between what's bad, and what's worse!"
I think the same came be said about being a surfer in Maine: Do you want your waves big and junky? Or do you prefer clean and tiny?" The dichotomy of surfing here usually leaves no other options. But I think East Coasters, and New England surfers in particular are both appreciative and resourceful; we take what we can get and make the best of it. And I can't help but think, that that provides a larger lesson for approaching life. Sure, there will be those dreamy days when the cosmos align and everything goes your way...the rest of the time, ya hafta work at it, take it as it comes and don't bitch about how hard it is...if it was easy, everyone would be doing it...
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Singing in the New Year
My current profession in this life is an LNA, or, licensed nurse's aide. Which is to say, I'm not a real nurse, I just do all the grunt work that nurses used to do but no longer have time for as they're too busy doing alot of the work that doctors used to do. Don't ask me what the doctors do these days. I work in a long-term care facility; ie. a "nursing" home. My work entails bedpans and diapers (though for "dignity's sake we don't call them diapers; "briefs" is the preferred euphemism.) I bathe and dress and feed and attend a gazillion other minor needs of my residents. I hear the incessant rings of call bells, the crying, moaning, sometimes screaming utterances of scared, confused, angry, depressed elderly people who all know they are there to die, that this is the end of their road. Though I have no formal medical, psychological, or sociological education or training, I have become an expert in practical care of patients suffering from dementia, Alzheimers, various neuroses and sundry psychoses, and medical conditions such as diabetes, Parkinsons, MS, COPD, stroke and heart conditions, amputations, knee and hip replacements, etc. etc. I also provide an ear to listen, a hand to hold, hugs and smiles and laughs for lonely people who have little to look forward to and way too much time to dwell on their dismal situation. And often, for my own benefit as well as theirs, and to preserve some sense of peace and wonder in life, not to mention mere sanity, and when I can summon it...I sing.
I've actually been told by many of my residents that I have a nice, or even beautiful voice. Some ask if I have formal training or if I sing in a choir or even professionally. I always deflect such comments; quipping that "I sound great in my shower or my car!" This usually elicits a smile or laugh and the subject is quickly dropped. Sometimes they encourage me though, urge me in fact to pursue it. One lady looked me dead in the eye and told me, "It's a gift; you have to use it." But understand, for me it is hard. I grew up in a "not-so-nurturing" environment of naysayers, all too ready to critique and dismiss the notion that I or anyone we knew had any real talent in any artistic endeavor. Make no mistake, it's not that we didn't appreciate the arts; we loved music and literature, film and dance and all the rest of the creative arts, but unless you were at the top level, and in possession of obvious world-class talent, to pursue any of these endeavors was to be considered a monumental waste of time, worthy of no more than "hobby" type passion. Reality, realism, and being realistic were the mantras. Smugness, scoffing, and smirking were the chains to tether such silly, and lofty ideas to the earth.
For many years, the only real artistic pursuit that I simply could not abandon, was my writing. I earned a BA in English with emphasis on creative writing at the University of New Hampshire. One of my writing mentors once told me that I write: "Not because you want to, but because you have to." Apparently he saw in my meager offerings of fiction that for me, writing was as necessary as breathing. But music? No, it was always the joke that nobody in my family had any talent for music. Yet, on my 40th birthday I purchased myself a guitar. And though I'm still a self-taught, barely intermediate player, I enjoy playing; for me, it's therapuetic if nothing else. Then recently, after years of clinical depression, divorce, and other monumental changes in my life, as I learned to enjoy life as I once did as a child, I started singing... Only in the shower and the car of course. But soon my confidence grew and I started singing aloud at work. Some of the residents smiled and pointed out that I sounded "happy." They appreciated that, someone with the nerve to be "happy"...amidst all that misery. I sang louder, started really working on hitting the notes, discovered that though I have limited range, I can improvise and create and go in other places with my voice; it's unique, it's mine. Still, I knew my limits. It was just a "hobby," just for fun. But more and more, people who heard my voice, in both the nursing home and then later outside of it, told me I needed to pursue it; that I should do something with my voice... I would smile, and deflect, and sometimes reply, that I was thinking about it, that I was still a work in progress, that I wasn't...ready yet. I knew my limits. I knew I wasn't a real singer. My real gift was in caring for people, holding their hands, cleaning them up, making them smile or laugh...
The other day, I was absently singing, while tending to one of my residents...she has MS and she's a good 20-30 yrs younger than the old folks in the home, she has nothing in common with them but she's confined to a wheelchair and cannot do more than the most limited of things for herself...this woman motioned for me to squat down to her level; she cannot even lift her head to look up, and she looked at me dead in the eye and said: "I don't want you to be offended...but what the Hell are you doing in this place?" I asked what she meant...she told me that I should be out there, in the real world, singing, on stage and famous...I chuckled and offered my usual deflection: "Hey, if I did that, I wouldn't be able to come take care of you and everybody else..." She shook her head, in her limited way, and replied: "You would be helping other people; you would be making them happy!"
I've been thinking...it's a New Year...oh sure, I know I have no real talent, I'm not a real artist, not a real singer...I have limitations, limited range...but I've been told...I also have a gift...
I've actually been told by many of my residents that I have a nice, or even beautiful voice. Some ask if I have formal training or if I sing in a choir or even professionally. I always deflect such comments; quipping that "I sound great in my shower or my car!" This usually elicits a smile or laugh and the subject is quickly dropped. Sometimes they encourage me though, urge me in fact to pursue it. One lady looked me dead in the eye and told me, "It's a gift; you have to use it." But understand, for me it is hard. I grew up in a "not-so-nurturing" environment of naysayers, all too ready to critique and dismiss the notion that I or anyone we knew had any real talent in any artistic endeavor. Make no mistake, it's not that we didn't appreciate the arts; we loved music and literature, film and dance and all the rest of the creative arts, but unless you were at the top level, and in possession of obvious world-class talent, to pursue any of these endeavors was to be considered a monumental waste of time, worthy of no more than "hobby" type passion. Reality, realism, and being realistic were the mantras. Smugness, scoffing, and smirking were the chains to tether such silly, and lofty ideas to the earth.
For many years, the only real artistic pursuit that I simply could not abandon, was my writing. I earned a BA in English with emphasis on creative writing at the University of New Hampshire. One of my writing mentors once told me that I write: "Not because you want to, but because you have to." Apparently he saw in my meager offerings of fiction that for me, writing was as necessary as breathing. But music? No, it was always the joke that nobody in my family had any talent for music. Yet, on my 40th birthday I purchased myself a guitar. And though I'm still a self-taught, barely intermediate player, I enjoy playing; for me, it's therapuetic if nothing else. Then recently, after years of clinical depression, divorce, and other monumental changes in my life, as I learned to enjoy life as I once did as a child, I started singing... Only in the shower and the car of course. But soon my confidence grew and I started singing aloud at work. Some of the residents smiled and pointed out that I sounded "happy." They appreciated that, someone with the nerve to be "happy"...amidst all that misery. I sang louder, started really working on hitting the notes, discovered that though I have limited range, I can improvise and create and go in other places with my voice; it's unique, it's mine. Still, I knew my limits. It was just a "hobby," just for fun. But more and more, people who heard my voice, in both the nursing home and then later outside of it, told me I needed to pursue it; that I should do something with my voice... I would smile, and deflect, and sometimes reply, that I was thinking about it, that I was still a work in progress, that I wasn't...ready yet. I knew my limits. I knew I wasn't a real singer. My real gift was in caring for people, holding their hands, cleaning them up, making them smile or laugh...
The other day, I was absently singing, while tending to one of my residents...she has MS and she's a good 20-30 yrs younger than the old folks in the home, she has nothing in common with them but she's confined to a wheelchair and cannot do more than the most limited of things for herself...this woman motioned for me to squat down to her level; she cannot even lift her head to look up, and she looked at me dead in the eye and said: "I don't want you to be offended...but what the Hell are you doing in this place?" I asked what she meant...she told me that I should be out there, in the real world, singing, on stage and famous...I chuckled and offered my usual deflection: "Hey, if I did that, I wouldn't be able to come take care of you and everybody else..." She shook her head, in her limited way, and replied: "You would be helping other people; you would be making them happy!"
I've been thinking...it's a New Year...oh sure, I know I have no real talent, I'm not a real artist, not a real singer...I have limitations, limited range...but I've been told...I also have a gift...
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