Learning to Surf: Part I

Today's blog starts about 26 years ago, in right field. There I am, a little toe headed creature with her blue Angels T-ball uniform on sitting in a field of flowers creating daisy chains, daisy tiaras, daisy rings and all other sort of daisy accoutrements. This is what I thought baseball was about; me sitting around, imagining myself somewhere else.

All of a sudden I am forced back to reality by the sound of my father (the coach of our T-ball team) yelling at me from the diamond to "Hustle, hustle! Hustle Casselle!!!" I drop my daisy chain and stand up to start "hustling" (whatever that is). I start running towards my dad thinking that he wants me to hurry up to bat. While I start running in-field something white floats by my head. Some part of my brain knows I should do something about that white thing but it conflicts with a message of "hustling" that my dad and now my step-mom are both shouting at me. Fear runs through me, and my natural reaction to fear has always been to freeze. And so there I stand, all of my four feet, covered in daisy chains from head to toe, a baseball mitt dangling loosely from my hand, the look of fear and panic on my face as my dad continues to shout "Hussle, Hussle, Hussle Casselle!!!"

Now I whisk you from that baseball diamond of yonder year to the present where that girl has become a grown woman and she is learning to surf. The setting is that of a great expansive ocean. Instead of my blue Angels t-shirt I now don a blue bikini. Instead of daisy chains I am surrounded by a sea of kelp which my hands play with aimlessly. Floating face down in the water, on my trusty longboard, I day dream about what lies underneath me in the murky waters below when all of a sudden I am snapped back to reality my friends yelling "Paddle, Casselle, Paddle, Paddle, Paddle!!!"

Again I am that four year old girl. Panic freezes me. I am supposed to do something. Something urgent, and yet I am not sure what. "Paddle?" I think to myself "Are they serious?" I look behind me at the encroaching tidal wave that is coming up my back side and I decide then and there that my "freeze" response will not be an efficient safety measure at this juncture. I force my arms into motion as my friends shout "Paddle! Paddle! Paddle!" and I can almost picture my dad on the beach shouting along with them "Hustle Casselle, Hustle!!"

I paddle with all the force I can muscle in my scrawny arms and then when I think I have it I use the last of my reserve energy to force my body up above my board and for about .5 seconds I have it. I have caught the wave. I am on top of the world. The white water of the wave is that white ball out there in right field and my glove is just about to wrap around it.

And then something happens, something bad. The "ball" slips from the tip of my "glove" and my board pearls head first into the wave with me on it. I am pulled into the crevice of the wave and yanked under the water and spun around until I am not sure which way is air and which way is the dangerous biting coral of the sea bed. I try to relax and trust the natural order of my body's buoyancy, to rise to the surface, but fail. It is hard to relax when your body is screaming, "Oxygen! Now!" Eventually I push myself up towards what I hope is air. My head breaks through the salty water and my eyes open to sweet sight of the Maui sun and my board tugging longingly from my ankle strap.

I check my body parts to make sure they are all still there and enjoy a minute of gratitude for life, and for air and for sun. And then I hear it… from the sidelines… "Paddle Casselle, Paddle, Paddle!" Here we go again.