“Do not
go gentle into that good night…
…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Dylan
Thomas
I ate shit in the water yesterday. Took three waves in two
hours. Two late drop lefts where I barely made the bottom turn before I was
quickly swallowed by closeout sections; the last was a steep right where the
board flipped vertical under me and the rounded-pintail narrowly missed
impaling my buttocks, glancing instead off my upper thigh first before I
bounced off the deck and skittered down the face before the lip drove me under. Pissed, I immediately hauled myself back onto
the board and started paddling back out, raging to redeem myself. But a five wave closeout set caught me and
swept me to the inside before I could make it back to the lineup. And that was
the end of my session; my watch read the stark reality that I had to exit the
water immediately if I hoped to get to work on time. It was an ignominious, humbling, and even
somewhat humiliating session. Ate. Shit.
There are those who will tell me that at 54 (FIFTY-FRIKKIN-FOUR,)
I’m old. That I’m too old for playing in
the surf. That my broke down body is a
by-product of that aging process, that it is inevitable, and that I should just
give it up. Some of these people are the
same ones who told me almost four decades ago that surfing was frivolous and a
waste of time. I even think they take
some glee when they hear me whinge about my bad knees, back, my aches and
pains, and how it inhibits my surfing; they tell me that it’s just the process
of aging, exacerbated by all my time in “that cold water,” and that it’s no
wonder my body should be falling apart…and that I should give it up. They always want me to give up, give in to it…be
old and fuddy like them. They can eat
shit.
My body IS old. But
cold water doesn’t break you down.
Surfing CAN break you down. Most
of my contemporaries, and those who were a few years older than me when I
started, have had back and neck and hip issues; some of these surfers have
given it up and I never see them in the water anymore. I understand why they don’t surf anymore, but
for me, even though I can’t perform the way I used to, and on some days when I’m
really KOOKING, like yesterday for example…I want to cry and scream and rage
against the body that is betraying me, the slowed reflexes, and stiff joints…but
I won’t, I can’t, it is inconceivable for me to quit. I’ve always said: “I started on my belly,
belly surfing little slabs of Styrofoam…and if it comes to it, I’ll end my
surfing days on my belly. If it comes to
it. I’m not there yet. My age, the cold water, the bullshit that
other people, (non-surfing people always,) want to heap on me…none of that is
real, and none of that will make me quit.
I have an auto-immune condition. Ankylosing Spondylitis. AS for short.
I won’t bother with the specifics, that’s what GOOGLE is for. Suffice it to say, like many auto-immune
diseases, it mostly manifests in achy, creaky joints, and chronic fatigue. The rheumatologist I used to see would always
ask about “morning stiffness.” If you
saw me crawling out of bed each morning, stumbling around on stiff and painful
limbs, unable to bend or squat or turn my head without the whole body coming
along for the ride because my neck won’t turn, you would never believe that I
could even put my wetsuit on, let alone paddle out and try to surf. And what is surfing like? Imagine Oz’s Tin
Man trying to surf…all those clumsy, clanking, stiff and metallic appendages…
I have bad days, and I have better days. I never really seem to have GOOD days
anymore, and that hurts. My AS is of
course exacerbated by other orthopedic issues in the way of old injuries and
surgeries I’ve incurred from a lifetime of playing sports. People told all the time when I was playing
those sports and getting hurt and blowing out knees and shoulders, that I was
too old then too. That I should give
them up. But I didn’t listen to them then either. Soccer used to be a passion but I no longer
play because of my knees. I miss
it. A lot. But I live with it. It doesn’t kill me like giving up surfing
would. I can’t, I won’t give up surfing.
What DOES kill me about my surfing is when I can’t perform
the way I used to. I understand that the
glory days of my youth are long past and that an erosion of skills IS
inevitable with age. But this is more
than an erosion; this is a cataclysm. I’m
a kook most days. The young surfers
paddling around me, looking right THROUGH me as if I’m invisible, a non-factor
in the lineup…I want to slap them sometimes.
I know what I must look like, a complete beginner, a kook…missing waves,
and then stumbling to my feet and sometimes not even able to make it to my
feet, like I’m a total beginner, flopping off the side of my board as the wave
engulfs me because my hips and my knees and my back just didn’t want to
cooperate and allow me to draw my feet under me smoothly and I stumble and fall…I
just want to slap them, because I KNOW that I’m NOT a kook, that I used to be a
better surfer than they will ever be… But my body betrays me now. AS robs me of surfing’s most basic, but
critical skill, the pop-up. Timing is
everything on a takeoff, and because of my slowed reflexes, my stiff joints, I’m
often in the wrong place at the wrong time and my body just won’t do what I ask
of it; my pop-op is more like a groan, push, slog, drag and stiff crawl to my
feet; usually the wave passes me by before I get that far…it is maddening. I want to rage and scream…somedays, like
yesterday, I just drive away from the beach, crying…
I have a friend. A
dear friend. After a thirty year career
as a nurse’s aide, and raising four beautiful and wonderful daughters, she has
embarked on a life-long dream of becoming a nurse. Currently she juggles nursing school, still
working as an aide, and ongoing motherhood to her four daughters. My friend taught me everything I know about
being a nurse’s aide and she is the most caring and compassionate aide I’ve
ever worked with. All her residents, all
her patients, absolutely ADORE her. I do
too. She will be an AWESOME nurse.
My friend has a hearing disability. She wears a hearing aide but still struggles
to hear things clearly. Being a nurse,
hearing is vital. Especially when using
a stethoscope to take blood pressures and listen to lungs and all the rest. Normal stethoscopes do not work for my friend
so she ordered a special one for people with hearing issues such as hers. When she received the instrument however she
discovered that she still was having trouble hearing properly with it. Hearing is critical in nursing. And recently, as my friend confided to me on
the phone yesterday--as I got home from my aborted surfing excursion, still
crying inside--she overheard two of her nursing classmates talking about her, saying
she had no business trying to be a nurse, on account of her hearing disability…
My humiliation and tears quickly transformed to rage as my
Irish temper flared inside. Bitchy
cattiness is rampant in nursing. And
these two bitches sparked that flare in me.
How DARE they say something so mean and cruel and bitchy… They don’t
know my friend like I do. They don’t
know that she is destined to be an AWESOME nurse, that she will be ten times
the nurse they can ever hope of being!
How dare they. Fucking bitches. But people say mean and hurtful and cruel and
insensitive…and incredibly fucking stupid things sometimes…
I was never in the military but I did grow up in a military
family. My dad and two brothers were
career military officers. Sometimes
growing up, I wondered if Dad didn’t understand that our large Irish American
family was not his own little platoon to command. But as trying as it was sometimes, growing up
in that environment, there was much teaching and leadership and wisdom that
came from that military way, that approach to life… In the military they have a saying that they
employ when encountering a problem or obstacle that seems insurmountable; Clint
Eastwood once uttered it in a somewhat sappy military movie called “Heartbreak
Ridge,” when his platoon was whinging about how they could possibly find a
solution to an obstacle. “We improvise,
we adapt, we overcome!” Eastwood growled in his gritty way.
Improvise, adapt, overcome.
Good life words there. As I spoke
to my nursing friend I remembered them.
I suggested a few improvisations, adaptations, and possible ways of
overcoming her hearing obstacle. And
even as I was trying to help her, to be a good friend, and hopefully in my
small way, assist her in realizing her dream…the back of my mind was
registering those same words, the wheels began spinning, as I conjured ways of
overcoming my own obstacles in the surf…
There are no shortages of mean, stupid, insensitive people
who will demean, ridicule, and tell you all the things you can’t do, things you
have no business even attempting. There
are no shortage of people who in their own misery, their own failures, their
own lethargy and defeat, will try to ensnare you and pull you down so they can
confirm that resignation and giving up, the paths THEY chose, were the proper
ones. But there is no problem where a
solution cannot be affected. There will
be setbacks and retreats in life, but if you keep paddling, if you don’t give
up, if you keep improvising, adapting, overcoming…you will leave all the
gutless quitters in your wake.
And as every surfer who has ever exited a tunneling wave,
spit blasting across your back, you will realize a nobility and glory that the
masses will never know…
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