That’s what the surfers call it. Stuck inside a wave, or a series of waves, being pounded mercilessly into the sand until you think you are going to die. And I’m here to tell you that its one of the very few things that middle-aged women hanging with their children on a beach have with the dudes at Mavericks.
It was a near-death experience, I was sure of it, so much so that when I managed to get my head above the water, gasping and coughing, my bathing suit top no doubt horribly arranged in a profoundly non-flattering way, I screamed out to my friend Robert, swimming a few feet in front of me, help me get out Robert!!!!! I didn’t even care about my bathing suit top. I just wanted out of the sucking jaws of Atlantic death.
“Stand up and turn around,” he said.
I did.
Surprising to find I was in shallow enough water to actually stand up. Even more surprising when I turned around… the beach was about 4 feet away from my shaking legs and mal-arranged bathing suit.
I staggered from the ocean and took note of the apparent calm of everyone else, who seemed to have been obliviously occupied with ham sandwiches and getting sunscreen on while I was close to death.
And all I had to do was stand up and turn around.
That’s my picture for 2012. Everything can seem so complicated. And while sometimes it really is, a lot of the time all that is needed is a yank on that bathing suit top and a wrenching of one’s obsessive gaze from whatever it is rising up before us while we freeze in fear.
Maybe all it takes to quietly claim the reality we want to see in our lives is to turn away from what scares us, and then stand up and turn around.
See you at the beach.
Written by Susan Griffin-Black, EO’s co-CEO
