Surfing. Just Like Walking a Balance Beam

Hawaiian Inspired “Custom Surfboards” Each 4”x 10” Created for a commission at work.  Watercolor and Ink  © 2023 Linnie Aikens Lindsay

Yes, I took a stab at it.  I lived at the beach.  It would have been a sin to let such an opportunity…or challenge pass me by, but I certainly wasn’t going to do it with an audience of friends from college! They all kept telling me I would be really good at it because I was a gymnast and had good balance. Maybe so, but I had to learn to swim first, didn’t I? My first summer living on campus provided the opportunity for the first step.  I knew how to stay afloat of course and do light swimming in a pool playing Marco Polo and diving for rings, but the ocean? The idea of that scared the living crap out of me! I was a young teen when the movie Jaws aired for the first time, and it scared to death a whole generation of kids. Who knew what lurked under the brownish-green water off the California Coast? 

That first summer I stayed and lived at the college while working there was when I forced myself to really learn how to swim.  I made it Goal #1.  A mile a day in the college pool.  Every day after work, I forced myself to go to the pool. I didn’t tell anyone because I was too embarrassed that I had lived in California my whole life, and now practically lived on the beach, and wasn’t comfortable in the ocean. Eventually, it turned from chore through gritted teeth to something I looked forward to at the end of the day.  Free style, breast stroke, back stroke and eventually butterfly. Learning to breathe had actually been the hardest part and one of my greatest fears…not being able to breathe and drowning. The feel of the water on my skin left me almost euphoric each day and my fears began to subside a bit.  Then they all came rushing back as I remember the day standing at the shore looking out to sea. 

It was a warm, calm day and the ocean was as glassy as it would ever be on the west coast. It was now or never.  I only swam out about 10-12 yards, just far enough that any errant waves would miss me.  That’s when I realized I actually could see below the water just a bit.  Goal #2: a mile a day in the ocean. I wasn’t as relentless at meeting this goal, mainly since I had to ride my bike down the steep Montecito roads from the college to get to the shore and then back up when I was done. The ocean-swimming lure wasn’t as tempting as the pool’s.  I could see the bottom of the pool, and there were sides in case I panicked about breathing. Still, I absolutely would not quit.  I did not, do not, and never will be a quitter.  I probably got in 30 or so such swims before I tackled Goal #3: Learn to surf. 

I took one of those kiddie classes offered down by the harbor. I was short and looked like a kid so wouldn’t stand out I thought.  Oh, the things I had to tell myself! Eventually I had the basics and my friends were only part right. My balance did help me, but a moving board is a whole different thing than a balance beam! When my friends had first encouraged me, I had these ridiculous visions inspired by surfing movies of me trick-surfing by doing handstands on my board and arabesques, aerials, walkovers and gracefully balanced poses I’d mastered on the balance beam. I must have been daft!

There were exhilarating moments to be sure, dropping down into a wave, even the small ones at my level, but my favorite part was hanging out alone while waiting for a wave.  Way out there, you feel one with the sounds, smells and forces of nature, influenced by and subject to her will but in sync with her too. You could hear the rhythmic crashing of the waves on shore, but out there, it was soft background music to the silence.  I probably would have been content never to catch a wave actually.  I had my share of wipe outs, the final one leaving me utterly terrified…all my fears pounding in my ears and before my eyes.  Trapped, “rag-dolled,” spun around and around as if in a washing machine, unable to breathe, not knowing how to find the surface, being out of control.  A summer friend I’d made surfing dove in and tugged me to the surface.  It was the last time I surfed. I never told any of my friends in college when they returned in the fall because I was so ashamed at having quit something.  I’d never even told my Hawaiian boyfriend when I watched from the North Shore as he surfed the next summer.

It would be ten more years before I would get out on the waves again, when I took up ocean kayaking.  I later went sailing with friends and even tried paddle-boarding, but for some reason, that felt too close to the water for me.

“Free to be Me, Free of Fear”   9”x12”  Watercolor and Ink.   © 2022  Linnie Aikens Lindsay

As I was painting a commission piece of these surfboards some 40 or more years later, the whole story was summoned from the depths of tamped-down and assiduously

forgotten memories and all lined up on the sand in my conscious thoughts.  My life of living on the beach and being a “California Girl” brings cheerful memories, but this one reminds me that where there is light, there is also dark in order to define the light and challenge one to reach for the light.  

I find it ironic that in the water is my absolute favorite place to be—my favorite animals, the sea turtle and dolphin. If I were to be any mythical creature, it would be a shape-shifting faerie mermaid, untethered to the ground and free to explore anywhere I please without fears. If I were a mermaid, this would be me, swimming carefree, I’d like to think.

This wouldn’t be the last time I would try to conquer my fear of the ocean, but it would be the last time I quit while trying.

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Note: All artwork, stories and observations posted within should be credited to the author, Linnie Aikens Lindsay (unless cited in the post). Permission is required for any use of my words or artwork. Taken from my work, "My Life As Wallpaper Art".