This Week In Not Surfing

My wife goes on a vacation to Mexico, leaving me with the children and the dog. It is the clearing of two hurdles. The first, and lesser, is leaving the children for five days. Or rather leaving me alone with the children in the house for five days. The first couple nights of her sabbatical I imagine being spent tossing and turning through nightmares about wastelands of sanitary disrepair. The second, and far more treacherous I'm sure, is the very idea of taking a vacation at all. Unwinding, disconnecting, entering a world where she is neither required to remark nor capable.

Uncharacteristic doors open for me. Being the sole possessor of our family station wagon with children tucked safely away at school, I am confronted with the peculiar possibility of late morning surfing. Hands rubbing together, growling a low chuckle, I scheme. I connive. I put off meetings, feign appointments, cryptically decline lunch dates. The Sunday afternoon Magic Seaweed check has Monday afternoon looking surfable. The Sunday night Magic Seaweed check has Monday morning starting to very good indeed. I go to bed with the taste of canary in my mouth.

I wake in a pool of condemned-man cold sweat, perusing my internal Google calendar before I even open an eye. I calculate the losses in time. I add up the cost in trust. I grind my teeth, slap my forehead, wrapping the softer pillow around my face and banging my head against the mattress, a muffled middle-aged man's baleful wail wheezing ineffectually through the down. There is no escape.

I hold out for Thursday morning. Magic Seaweed has a hip to armpit high wind-belch possibly hitting between six and eleven AM. The winds are teetering on perfect (enough), a forecast with a 75% chance of being on the dot. Holy basil tea. L-theanine. Magnesium powder. It will hold.

In June last year, a Texan died from swimming in the ocean five days after getting "Jesus Is My Life" tattoo'd on his leg, the result of an infection run riot through an alcohol ravaged body, welcomed by the healing wound.

"Oh! There you are. Listen, everyone's in on the books for Thursday morning. Oh, are you sure you can't meet then? Look, Ben can't meet on Wednesday and he's leaving for a week on Friday. Robert and Grace can only do Thursday breakfast, afternoon isn't available and we need to sort this project out right away. Tuesday is booked solid and I can't fit anything in Wednesday afternoon. Can you do Wednesday night? Tomorrow night? No? Oh right, you're Mr. Mom this week, sorry I forgot. No, no one can do Wednesday. Are you sure you can't do Thursday?"

Holy basil tea. L-theanine. Magnesium powder. My eleven year old has a fever. My three year old refuses to get into bed before ten. Suddenly, brutally, I am off my January diet, eating slices of pizza and bowls of spaghetti and meatballs.

And the surf goes dead.

At least that's what I keep telling myself. I'm not even looking at the forecasts. My body is getting tighter, my back stiffer. At an earlier time in my life, were I this skinny I would have looked "sinewy." But at this stage "droopy" does.

My wife returns from Mexico and fills her previously open Thursday mornings with a new client.
This leaves Sunday mornings, Monday mornings and Tuesday mornings for possible sessions.

And last night, tomorrow morning looked good.

A year ago I won a tattoo from a silent auction fundraiser for my son's elementary school. The tattoo artist emails me on Friday that she'll be free Sunday afternoon. Doing the seasonal maths I reckon that if I don't get this tattoo now I might have to go under the needle later in the spring when the air's warmer. When the sun is coming up earlier.

I'm not sure whether the Jesus tattoo on that man's leg was in fact the name of his son, but the new tattoo on my arm will be. I can't imagine anyone being more anyone's life than that, albeit people seem to feel pretty strongly about their gods. I feverishly scribble with a Sharpie a couple dozen variations on a few pieces of paper and and head out the door with the likely design. My next surf will have to wait another couple weeks.

Holy basil tea. L-theanine. Magnesium powder. I'll pull out that foam roller.