Surf's up

 

Sam got a surfboard. A surfboard with a dinged up fin and a chunk out of one side. People my dad works for are always giving him stuff. On this one day, Sam was helping out, and they offered him the surfboard. My brother is excited. All he talks about lately is surfing. 

In 1966, there are a lot of people talking about surfing. Everywhere. There are bands like The Beachboys. Movies are being made at nearby Malibu and Zuma beach. 

Sam tells me how to fix my hair like a surfer girl. It doesn’t work with my wavy brown hair. Nothing ever works with my hair. And my dad says I’m too young for a two piece bathing suit. I try to make surfer clothes for my Barbie. They never look good. 

Sam has spent hours working on the board. It helps that my daddy has lots of tools. They fill in holes and cover them with fiberglass. It takes lots of coats with stinky liquids, lots of sanding and smoothing. My mommy chases them out of the living room. Finally waxing and polishing. The board is so big and too heavy for me to pick up. 

Sam has a driver’s license now, and an old Ford pickup truck. He starts going out to the nearest beaches to try out his board. He wears a tee shirt with his swim shorts. He usually goes early in the morning. I don’t know how he can stand it, the water is so cold. 

He says Malibu is too crowded. Sometimes he can’t find parking. Zuma is too far. So he goes to Will Roger’s State Beach, below the cliffs of Santa Monica. The surfers aren’t allowed on the nice sandy part, only on the section that has a lot of rocks along the water. 

One morning he wipes out. He comes home bruised, scraped up, and limping. Another chunk is missing out of the board. He leans it up against the side of the house. 

He never talks about surfing again. 

My brother was amazing. He had genius level abilities when working with his hands and learning how to make things. He built intricate wooden models of sailing ships, did oil painting, and taught himself to sew tuck and roll upholstery for his jeep. But he struggled with school. I look back on some of his behaviors, always jiggling a foot and retreating from noise and crowds. I think if he was a child today, he would have had a diagnosis of some type and help instead of my dad’s overbearing criticism. 

But I also wonder. What if he hadn’t wiped out so badly that day? What if he had repaired his board again? What if he hadn’t given up?

I have heard so many stories through the years of that one event, that one choice that someone feels defined so much of their life. These are often the choices we regret. In the end, it becomes useless speculation. 

What if he spent the next few years on a surfboard? Maybe he never started working with our neighbor in his machine shop. Maybe he never had the job where he met his wife and mentored and trained younger machinists through the years. 

We are a sum of our decisions. We are the only ones that can truly know why we made the choices we made and what we learned from them. We are the only ones who can tell our stories. 

Earlier Days