Caught in the Inside
I tried to learn to surf when I was twelve years old. I went with a body board to the beach, paddled out and waited. My older brother was teaching me and he was a surfer, so I was in good hands. I caught a few little waves in, and it was such a beautiful sensation, gliding over the waves and moving with the ocean. For a moment, it was perfect, and I imagined myself in a few months moving to the real surfboards, and having this be my new favorite thing to do.
Then something in the water changed, and a rough swell came in, and I was suddenly unable to see where I was. I remember the waves kept coming, and the leash was tugging at me, and I was being tumbled around in a washing machine of surf, just trying to get my head above water so I could breathe and reassess whether I could get back to shore or past the break. After a few grueling minutes, I was picked up by a big wave and slammed on the beach so hard that I couldn't breathe for a few seconds. The lifeguard came. I remember being terrified at the feeling of sucking in with all my might, trying to get a breath in after choking on all that water, but being physically unable to make my lungs work.
I never surfed again.
When I was eighteen, I worked at a home furnishings store in Edgartown, MA, one of three jobs I had that summer. The store was new and was at the back of Nevin Square, next to a gallery that sold art from some painter in Hawaii. Between rushes and when the daily shop duties were done, I'd sit out front on the porch and shoot the breeze with the guy working at the gallery next door. His name was Ernie, and at that point I'd venture to say he was in his early fifties, but that's through the lens of an eighteen-year-old, so he could have been much younger.
Ernie talked about traveling and writing, and about Hawaii where he lived the rest of the year. He truly loved the art he sold and would explain the beauty of each new piece he brought in, showing me the artist's use of light that brought the waves to life. He said that these paintings were about as close as you could get to seeing the waves as you do when you're deep in a barrel on a surfboard.
At some point in the summer, Ernie told me he read palms. I of course asked him to read mine and he told me that he didn't want to, because he hated reading young people with so much life left. He said it felt a bit unfair. I begged him the whole summer, and the week before I left for college, he finally obliged.
He held my palm and got a pained look. He asked me if I really wanted to hear, and I said yes. He said that I'd have two great loves in life, and that I'd find the first one early, but that they would pass away and I'd be devastated and be unable to be with anyone for years after. He said I'd go through several terrible things and lose everything more than once. He mentioned a natural disaster, and illness, and death–basically a damned hard life until I reached age forty. But then he said it would all get better. I'm meet someone wonderful and it would last for the rest of my life. I'd travel, and have stability for a while, and I'd have a home. So if I could make it to forty, my life would be a happy one. He was so sad when he was telling me all of this–sad to have it be what he saw and sad to pass it on. Ernie was a kind man; I know it bothered him.
I was eighteen and it was summer, and I didn't take it seriously at all. I wasn't superstitious, and this was just some good fun. Ernie and I hung out on the porch during the lulls for the rest of that week, but I remember thinking his demeanor with me had changed a bit after that day. He was all love and warmth as he usually was, but a touch more solemn.
I had forgotten all about Ernie and his cryptic palm reading for years and years, until I was in my parents' basement during cancer treatment last year, when I found an old journal from that time. It just said Ernie in Maui, and that if I sent him a postcard to the marina in Lahaina, anyone there would be able to find him. It all came rushing back to me. I remembered what he'd said; pretty much all of it had come true. I tried unsuccessfully to find him online. I still haven't been able to.
As I write this, I'm a couple of weeks away from turning forty, and Ernie has been on my mind a lot. I don't want to jinx any of it, but I feel like there's something changing with the energy around me. The winds have shifted somehow. Where they've been stagnant in my life, things are beginning to move quickly.
I'll admit that I have been resentful of all the years that were stolen from me, whether it was the alienation that comes with grief and loss, or from the years of setback after Katrina and then again, a decade later, for cancer. I kept going and the world kept going, but it seemed as though I'd jumped around in time and had so many good years stolen from me in the process. I've been resenting turning forty because my twenties and thirties were so hard: a constant beat-down; a constant setback.
People around me had been able to date in their twenties and meet the loves of their lives. They'd gotten married and had kids and gotten advanced degrees and had amazing careers. They'd been able to pursue their art or travel to fascinating places or even just do normal things in the normal order of life. They hadn't spent the last twenty years working for something, almost getting it, and then having it taken away, again and again, like Sysiphus but without the opportunity to ever have been king.
They hadn't spent a collective decade or more retracing their steps, or laboring to rebuild their lives to where they were several years ago. They'd just...lived. I was jealous. I am still jealous. And approaching age forty brings all that jealousy back. I miss all that stolen time–all that potential wasted on rebuilding myself again and again.
A lot of my life up to now has felt like that moment at the beach, trying to get my head up above the tumbling water and steal a breath while I figure out how to survive. It's a pattern of having something beautiful happen, and joy, and the feeling of being on the precipice of something wonderful, and then everything being crushed. It's made me fear looking forward to anything, and has created worst-case-scenario complex in me, because a large number of times, the worst case scenario came true.
If Ernie was right, all that is changing. If he's right, I'm going to start seeing good things happen–normal things–the things that people around me have been able to do all along. If Ernie is right, I'm about to meet my second great love and things are going to get easier. Less time spent redoing the hard work of the past. More time spent working hard for the future.
It feels like it's going to happen; that's how it feels today. Shifting tides, a beautiful set coming in. Easy to paddle out and try again.
I don't know if it's true, and because of my history I'm so, so scared to be hopeful about it, but on the way home today, I'm going to get a postcard and a stamp, and I'm going to address it to the marina in Lahaina, attn: Ernie. I want to write him and tell him to get in touch. And to tell him he was right about everything so far, but don't worry, I made it. And I want to thank him for reading my palm twenty years ago, because after all the pain he laid out that has matched my life's roadmap, now I have hope that the good times he told me about are on the way.