by Barbara Fischkin
Photo by Bob Arkow
Deep Water Background
For an opus on surfing, I recommend Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan. I am humbled each time I pick up this book. Four summers ago, at 64, I decided to try to surf. People who do not surf, and even some who do, are impressed when I mention this, as if any day now I will be gliding upright over sky-high waves and onto the shore. The truth: For me this is a very minor undertaking and would not even qualify as a hobby. In other words: It is something to sneeze at. I have yet to stand up on a surfboard.
I can get on two knees, briefly and occasionally crouch on one foot while supported by the other knee. Then splash, I fall backwards into the water. Backwards is the correct way to fall. You can see the board before it bangs you in the head. With any luck you can then grab its rim or use the leash—presumably still attached around your ankle—to pull the board towards you and safely away from other surfers. I congratulate myself for, at the least, being able to fall off a surfboard well.
Finnegan writes that if you want to be an accomplished surfer, you must start by the time you are fourteen, at the latest. The exact quote: “People who tried to start at an advanced age, meaning over fourteen, had, in my experience, almost no chance of becoming proficient, and usually suffered pain and sorrow before they quit. It was possible to have fun, though, under supervision, in the right conditions…”
I agree, with some caveats.
Conditions: Controlled by the deities.
Proficiency: Run your own race.
Sorrow: Nope
Pain: Yes. But I’ve also had pain from walking too long in high heels on hard pavement.
Quitting: Only applies to prospective champions.
I do have the best supervision: Instructors from the Skudin Surf School, run by a legendary family of surfers. The school is based in Long Beach, New York where we live—with branches in New York City, Puerto Rico—and at an indoor wave pool in New Jersey.
In the water with Skudin instructors, I have fun. I finish a lesson feeling exhilarated in a deeper way than I do from any other workout. And for me the bar for this kind of exhilaration is high. I was never an athlete but I do practice yoga and Pilates and I have managed to slowly ride the 40-mile New York City Five Boro Bike Tour four times. There is, though, something other-worldly about being welcomed by a massive ocean, an ocean that treats you like a worthy opponent, despite the imbalance of the matchup. It is eons beyond anything David ever dreamed when faced with Goliath.
Not that I surf willy-nilly. I have rules. My own. Over the years, though, they have changed. As I prepared for my first surf lesson, I swore to stand on a board before I reached the age of 90. Then I met real waves on a real surfboard and considered that, for me, my oath may have been a bit rash. Now I only promise myself that I will surf at least once a summer, until I no longer can.
Fortunately I have an age-appropriate “partner in crime.” Jennifer Gilmore. Jen is one of my best friends and is actually seven years younger, although she claims that “when you get this far, we are all the same age.” After I surfed for the first time, I posted a photo and heard from her, perhaps within minutes.
“Next summer I will take a lesson with you,” she said. “I promise.”
From someone else I might have brushed this off as a “maybe.” A promise made a year in advance is easily forgotten. But Jen and I are connected with the same intensity girls once felt when they made small cuts in their fingers to mix their blood. We keep the promises we make to one another, especially when fun is the object. We both have adult sons with non-speaking autism. Jen’s younger son. My elder son. Luke and Dan are amazing human beings. But raising them and supporting their right to be engaged with a world that doesn’t ignore their intelligence and individuality has been—and is— a challenge. Having fun without them makes us better mothers when they need us.
In the summer of 2020, Jen, as promised, joined me in the ocean as we each took our own private lesson. The pandemic was a few months old. The ocean may have been the safest place to be. We were two students with two instructors. We tried to stay near each other amidst the waves. But not too close. We knew that even our friendship might not survive a surfboard crash.
Jen stood on her board after only a few tries. I, of course, did not. She posted a photo of herself standing. Each time we surf, she stands and posts a photo. She gets many “likes,” and lots of “go get ‘em, girl,” type comments. I do not hate her for this, not for the standing, not for the posting. After all, we have that bond.
Jen, in turn, has forgiven me for the “fantastic” idea I had that we should try a week of surf camp, which we did in 2021, the second summer we surfed together. The instructors were great but the ocean was rough—they shook their heads, calling the conditions “a washing machine.” One of our fellow campers, the teenager in our 15-to-90 age group, told me that he was “an Olympic hopeful,” in snowboarding and that he found surfing more difficult. “You can predict snow but you can’t predict the ocean,” he told me. “So don’t be discouraged.”
The next summer Jen and I resumed our private lessons with our one-on-one instructors standing behind us in the water. Jen keeps saying we should take out surfboards and do this on our own. I suspect she can. Not me. I need someone behind me in the water to prompt me to paddle when a wave is close and then say: “Go.” There are plenty of people my age and older who do not need as much supervision. I do.
Deep Water Fear
I began to write this column a few days before taking this summer’s lesson. My usual pre-surf anxiety had mounted. Again I wondered if I would die on a surfboard, crouching not standing and mortified for eternity. I trend towards the dramatic. When I was a little girl, my mother called me “Sarah Bernhardt.” My younger son, an accomplished athlete from childhood on, once asked me: “Mom, what sport did you play in school?” It was a question I had anticipated for years. With dread.
“I was too busy for sports,” I replied, trying to sound casual and distracted.
“Busy with what?” he pressed on, as if to say one should never be too busy for sports.
“Midwood High School Sing,” I replied. “I was on the lyric committee, I acted, one year I helped to direct.”
“Ah,” he concluded. “So your sport was theatrical productions.”
Each year I feel as afraid of taking this surf lesson as I am of writing this column or writing anything even though I have been publishing for 48 years with verified evidence of success. The blank page, the empty computer screen are the moral equivalent of standing on a surfboard. Fear is fear.
Jen gets scared too. This summer, she confessed this three weeks before our lesson, while we were having a more subdued version of fun on a yoga club’s sunset meditation boat ride. “I’m already petrified,” she said, as we were gently instructed to inhale, exhale and “let it go.”
With surfing I also fear (in advance) cold water, rough waves, crashing into a jetty, sharks of course, although I have never seen one-—and a regression. Maybe this year I won’t even get on two knees. Maybe this year, at 68, the arthritis, sciatica, herniation and radiculitis that x-rays and MRIs always seem to find will come to the fore. These maladies live with me, even if I am in denial that they exist.
Once I am in the water, though, I am no longer afraid.
This summer, the fear disappeared before I hit the beach. As Maui burned and smoldered, I was reminded about legitimate fear. Even my little-bitty surfing felt like a symbolic act. An act of solidarity with others who surf. I opened Finnegan’s book, a permanent fixture in my Kindle library, searched for the word “Lahaina” and found 31 mentions. Surfing is like this. Just when you think it is all about fun, you learn it is about so much more.
Why I Try to Surf
This is a tangled but lovely tale starring family and friends. It harkens back to the years 1994-7 when our family lived in San Clemente, California, where we moved for a while so that my journalist husband could lead an investigative team at the Orange County Register. He did and won a Pulitzer Prize, although neither of us learned to surf. San Clemente was an obvious place to do so. Then again, so was our home base: Long Beach, New York.
What we did learn, as a result of our time in California, is that surfing is great for children and adults with autism. It provides sensory support and proprioceptive input, both of which enable many with autism to negotiate the everyday obstacles that do not bother a lot of us. Inviting people with autism to try surfing also demonstrates faith in their untested competence. Decades after the Willowbrook era, there are still those who think the activities of Luke and Dan should be limited—and that they should be kept away from the general public.
Surfers do not buy this. In California, unrelated to the surfing we did not do, we became friends with the Paskowitzes, perhaps the most famous family of surfers in the state, if not the country. (As a native New Yorker, I view the Paskowitz family as the Skudins of California.)
To give credit where credit is due, it was Izzy Paskowitz, the most prominent scion of his family, who came up with the idea of surfing for individuals with autism, when his son Isaiah was diagnosed. Isaiah’s success in the water prompted the creation of Surfer’s Healing, which took its lessons on the road to autism communities nationally, including Long Beach and nearby Rockaway, just over the Long Island border in New York City. Dan, now 35, surfed for the first time with Surfer’s Healing back in the late 1990s. He loved it. Eventually Jen’s son Luke, joined Dan in the water—and loved it too.
Since 2002, Long Beach has had its own surfing non-profit. Cliff Skudin, President of Skudin Surf, asked my husband, Jim Mulvaney, to help him start an East Coast version of Surfer’s Healing. Many others helped make the Long Beach-Skudin- based Surf for All, what it is today, including Betsy Skudin, the elegant matriarch of her family. Although Surf For All started by providing lessons for surfers who have autism, it grew to include many. It has provided thousands of free surf lessons for a wide range of individuals, who might not otherwise get in the water. Surfers with visual and hearing impairments, cerebral palsy, diabetes, histories of foster care, Wounded Warriors and more have been Surf for All surfers. Most recently a high school volunteer invented a wheelchair that balances well on a surfboard.
Dan also takes regular private lessons with another prominent local surfer, Jeremy Feldschuh. They are often in the water two or three times a week.
It was seeing Dan in the ocean, having so much fun that made me feel I wanted to experience what he does. He doesn’t stand on a surfboard, either. He won’t even crouch. He just rides with the largest waves—larger than I would ever attempt— lies on his board and steers it all the way to shore.
And so I surf. This year’s lesson went very well. My instructor, Maceo Eramo, a Long Beach High School senior—and a wrestler—gave me good advice. “Maybe you shouldn’t try to stand,” he said. “Not yet,”
For me this was a wonderful way to leave open the possibility that someday I might stand. Maceo suggested I paddle longer, situate my body, get on all fours like a yoga down dog starting position, try to lift my upper body and concentrate on staying on the board.
Each time I surf, I also think of another neighbor, Mary Annapurna, the mother of a world champion surfer Balaram Stack. Mary surfed for the first time when she was seventy and later told me “now I know why he likes it so much.”
As parents, we know so little about how our children experience the world. When my sons were small and began to ice skate, I wanted to learn with them, even though as a child my only attempt at ice skating was a colossal failure.
So at 38 I learned to skate. I am not a very good ice skater either. But, yes, I skate standing up. Mostly.