Learning to surf in the sunset of life. Image: Tozzi
I knew it wouldn’t last. It finally broke. The zipper pull on my U.S. Navy-style jacket – a favorite of mine – simply sheared off. Desperate for a replacement and, with cool fall weather approaching, I headed for the menswear department in JC Penney’s at a local mall. Arriving just as the store opened, I appeared to be the lone browser. Prowling the aisles, I found a coat I liked, pulled it off the rack and threaded my way to the fitting room.
As I emerged from the try-on room and headed towards the fancy three-sided mirror to see how I looked in this replacement jacket, I was surprised to encounter another fellow preening in front of the mirror–an odd coincidence as I hadn’t even seen a clerk. “There’s bound to be something that fits,” I offered, casually trying to relieve an awkward moment. In his early thirties and quite handsome, the fellow told me he was getting married in a week and needed a suit.
“Got any honeymoon plans?” I asked, as we each took turns twisting before the mirrors, examining front, back and sideways. “Yeah, going to Indonesia,” he said. I was curious why he picked faraway Indonesia. “Surfing…” he explained. “We’re going to stay eleven weeks… my wife’s okay with me in the water; she doesn’t surf, just loves being on the beach, maybe kicking back with a frosty Bintang.”
“Eleven weeks?!” I was astounded. As a self-employed woodworker, he said he could tailor his schedule to accommodate his surfing passion.
And so we bonded instantly there before all those mirrors, if only because it was one of those rare moments when we each met someone who spoke the language of stoke. More special too as Rochester surfers are a rare and scattered breed. Far from the ocean, here near the lapping shores of Lake Ontario, third largest of the Great Lakes, we briefly traded recent surfing experiences, mine on the coast of New Hampshire and at Cocoa Beach, Florida, and his in Santa Barbara and San Diego. We both claimed local breaks at different spots close to home along Lake Ontario’s southern shore but both confessed to daily “mind-surfing,” imagining we were at the ocean. As members of the tribe, we know well and love the mood elevation, the spiritual booster shot that flows from mere thoughts of being on a small board in big water.
I’m not likely to see my new acquaintance again. He’s headed with his new bride to Indo, to the swell magnet at Uluwatu, signaling at once that he was so much more experienced than I. And from the suddenly faraway look in his eyes, I could tell he was already there in Bali. He had only to sweat through his fast-approaching wedding. Mind you, I wasn’t at all jealous of my young friend’s impending surf journey. I’ve learned it’s not worth wishing you were young again. There’s only the present moment. So the two of us shook hands; I wished him well and headed with my new coat to the cashier. We were simply at different stages of life.
Nevertheless, there, at JC Penney’s in front of the mirror, the realities were plain. The young, obviously self-assured fellow, probably quite a talented surfer, whom I might easily envy, with the balance and panache to ride a narrow board on surly waves. And me, my youth behind me, struggling each time I paddle out, wrestling with my own incompetence, self-doubt, reluctant to squeeze into anything more cumbersome than a 3/2 wetsuit yet knowing that when we stop taking risks, we all start going downhill.
A year ago, I had just turned 70, a septuagenarian grom, and had designed a modest rite of passage for myself by taking a private surfing lesson in tumultuous surf just south of Cape Canaveral in Cocoa Beach. On lesson day, an onshore wind howled, the sun shone brightly. Despite being sluiced in lots of briny froth, I was determined to mine the two-hour session for all it was worth and finally managed one successful pop-up. Flying back up north, I wouldn’t be able to enter warm water again – in often frigid Lake Ontario or in Florida – until the following spring.
Literally basking in the incredible challenge of learning to surf at my age, the glossy surf mags beckoned. Not for me, these popular publications, with their young male and surf-fashion orientation and their frustratingly jejeune interviews. I find more quality surf-oriented journalism in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and Outside Magazine. I then began to troll the internet’s precious few web sites—or any blog at all—searching for other seniors who had embarked upon the waves in their advanced years, who consider themselves honorable wannabe watermen. A few inspiring examples can be found at Growingbolder.com.
Of course, I did not find much else that satisfied my late-life surfer’s quest–beyond the occasional 40 or 50-something male who resumes surfing after some hiatus and wonders if he is “over the hill.” What I came face to face with, instead, as I tried to reckon my age with my new-found zeal for surfing, was a deeply philosophical question, one that has occupied great philosophical minds for centuries: how do we make the most of one’s life? How do we know when we are fulfilled? I guess I was hoping there might be some kind of trickle-down effect of lofty philosophical ideas. In their tavernas, in their olive and apricot groves, ancient Greeks first wrestled with such questions. Their philosophizing proposed to give us clear-eyed ways to think about the world and how we should live in it–urgent matters for any age.
I might have chosen pickleball or tennis. Both are relatively safer, with players’ feet firmly planted on the ground, but I am a good swimmer, former sea-kayaker and grew up by the sea. I saw in that first Florida surfing lesson that there was something elemental; something so compelling about being in, and paddling out through, breaking waves; something about the utter calm embracing you while just sitting on your board waiting for the next set.
I began to relish the myriad little tricks one learns about surfing like shuffling your feet in the sand as you enter the shore break so as to scare away any warm water stingrays; the finesse required of a successful turtle-roll, the frisson of danger and, yes, risk. Was it lunacy to begin surfing at 70? I hoped not. I suspect that once we become more advanced, we are likely to forget such baby steps en route to mastery. So I relish Kierkegaard’s challenge: “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily; to not dare is to lose oneself.”
