Life’s still a beach!
If it’s true that it ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings, then there was a fat lady singing somewhere as I paddled out recently on a nine foot Surf Line board to surf a few waves in El Tunco, El Salvador. It’s hard, not only the surfing, but the self awareness that you can no longer do, let alone do very well, something you grew up doing and have done all of your adult life. Oh, sure, you say, you have lived in land locked Colorado for the last forty years. My surfing safaris consisted of one or two trips a year to Southern California or Hawaii. But on those trips you did it, and knew you still could. But something happened. Like free lance writer Michael Swift wrote when he was only 38, “age sneaks up, leaves you with compromises.” It isn’t going to happen to me, you say.
I still run (although not as often), swim (not as fast) , bike (not as far). I sleep well, eat well. But you come to realize that it happens to everybody. Life long beach boys in Hawaii, guys I grew up with, surfed with, hung with, guys who spent their entire lives on the beach. World class surfers and men of the ocean all told me that a time would come when the magic would no longer be there. It happened to them, and it would happen to me. Better to accept it. People say “You’re only as old as you think you are.” Whoever came up with that platitude, that bullshit, was either delusional or not very old.
When I came in from a very unimpressive session on the waves, and sat dejectedly with my daughter on the beach, and explained to her that I used to “rip it” on waves like these, she looked at me and sympathetically said “Dad, you used to rip it on waves like those years ago.” Ahhh, from the mouth of babes. So, don’t worry about me. I’m OK with it. I’ll still paddle out, get some exercise. I can still read the waves, know when and where to take off, but I’ll just have to enjoy whatever ride the wave gives me. It’s funny: I’m now OK with that. And when my daughter is along, I am still enjoying two of the things that I enjoy more than any other: time on the water, and time with her.
For anyone, young or old, it doesn’t get any better than that.