Mamajuana

Do you want a mango? I’ll pick one for you, he says and leaps out of the car. Your childhood dreams of tropical islands swim before your eyes and take root in your spine, as rainforest mountains rise around you and you think how you need more time, always more time you are never sated. The mango tastes sweet, warm and unlike anything you know. He laughs at your joy, and that is all.

Every morning we rise at dawn, ride the dilapidated old van out to the swells, and make our way to the lineup. It is early, too early, and yet it is all perfect, you forget your tired eyes, your heavy muscles, your body browns and you forget to look in the mirror, it doesn’t matter. On my last morning, the waves beat and beat me, I never seem to make it anywhere. Anger rises is my chest, I yell at the ocean to give me a break, show me a kindness, but at last I relent and ride to shore, sitting on the cool sand and staring at the sea with a scowl. But as I sit, and watch each wave roll toward me, on and on again in a steady rhythm all its own, a calm comes over me. The ocean does not owe me anything. The ocean is there, steady, reliable, ever changing and yet perpetually the same. I owe it to myself to meet it, every day, as best I can, better even than I know how. Take the punches, earn the rides, let the current sink into my blood stream until we are one and the same. Tomorrow the sun will rise, the ocean will move, and I will too.

I do not get a beautiful last ride. I get a beat up body and a lesson in humility. I return to land. But I am not the same as I was before the wave. And that gift may be sweeter still.