A reminder of what a pleasure it is to draw breath, to be alive, to feel the kinetic energy of a wave underfoot.
I pulled into the St Andrews State Park lot on a hot, sunny early summer day.
It was full of work vans, trucks, and rusty old Volvo wagons with ancient Free Tibet and Gotcha stickers. Wave riders were scattered about the lot in various stages of their ritual, waxing up, changing, recounting high points of the day in excited tones and with animated hand gestures.
The first tropical swell of the year had arrived and a charge filled the air. I was cautiously optimistic, having not ridden waves of any consequence since my return from California.
My muscles felt weak, my body fragile.
The reckless confidence I’d come to rely upon since a youth full of sandbottom tubes and concrete skate parks was gone. Suddenly, I felt very old. I tried to assume the countenance of all the other happy-go-lucky surfers attempting to match the vibe of the guy parked next to me just returning from a five-hour session.
“The best I’ve ever seen it!” he said.
“Yeah,” I said to myself, “People say that every year.”
I had come home to the Gulf coast in December for Christmas with the family, a weeklong visit that turned into a nine-month ordeal.
On January 1, 2020 I skipped my return flight to LAX to get some health issues checked out. One thing led to another and, after a week of workups, I found myself on the receiving end of a call from my family’s homeopathic doctor instructing me in a somber tone that I needed to get to the hospital right away for a blood transfusion.
My haemoglobin was six. Was that bad?
The average range for a man is between thirteen and seventeen, I protested a bit, but the truth was I hadn’t been feeling well for a while. My folks dropped me off in the ER parking lot at the hospital where I was born and I proceeded to endure one of the worst nights I can remember.
I had an allergic reaction at some point in the transfusion and spent most of the night in a delirium, fevered and sweating through my hospital gown (I hate those fucking gowns).
It was a night that seemed to last forever and I was reminded of a Jorge Luis Borges’ short about an old general due to be executed who lived the span of a lifetime in the moment just before he was shot.
I watched the shoulder-high peaks from sand just as I had went years prior as a cocksure, invincible youth.
The surf was good, and not just by Gulf Coast standards. The swells wedged themselves along the jetties to the east, contorting into shapely peaks before roping west along the bar. A small handful of locals were picking the waves to pieces. One grom was having his way with the critical sections launching airs on the inside and drawing graceful lines over the deeper, outer bar.
After a bit of a battle I was in the lineup.
Well, I thought, at least I’d made it out.
I had a premonition that my trip to the ER for a pint of blood was not going to be an overnight visit. Sure enough, a week later I was still an inmate of Tallahassee Memorial. I would go for walks around the halls in the mornings much to the alarm of the staff, and got myself stuck down a desolate passage one day when I lacked the strength to complete the journey.
I was escorted back to my cell by a stern nurse and was warned in a menacing tone to remain in my “suite.” After eight days, a bone marrow biopsy and countless blood tests and scans, the doctors told me I had stage 4B Classical Hodgkins Lymphoma.
And with that, I was allowed to go home.
Several days later the doctor called and announced the radiologist had noticed a bit of fluid around my heart on my MRI and decided it must be removed pronto. I said the fluid showed up on an MRI five years prior and had been perfectly harmless there minding its own damn business.
They removed the fluid from around my heart with a long needle at which point, I’m told, my heart stopped. The doctors notes mention it remained thus for fifteen minutes, during which time the two largest fellows in the room, to whom I’m forever indebted, applied maximum pressure to my chest in an effort to restart the old ticker while my mother prayed in tongues in the corner as they urgently ushered her out.
My objections were dismissed and I was brought in for the “routine procedure”.
They removed the fluid from around my heart with a long needle at which point, I’m told, my heart stopped. The doctors notes mention it remained thus for fifteen minutes, during which time the two largest fellows in the room, to whom I’m forever indebted, applied maximum pressure to my chest in an effort to restart the old ticker while my mother prayed in tongues in the corner as they urgently ushered her out.
Or attempted to, anyway.
She insisted on remaining and appealing to God Almighty on behalf of the surgeons and, presumably her son. Her requests must have been heard. I came back with full mental faculties (or at least as full as before) which I’m told is quite rare after fifteen minutes gone.
Nonetheless my chest was subsequently sawed open at the surgeon’s hunch there was a clot somewhere. No clot. And just like that I was put back together more or less as they remembered me having been assembled in the first place.
The water was a radiant blue-green.
The tall dunes with their seagrasses and coast oaks bristled under the glaring Florida sun. I was thrilled just to be out among the roiling swells even if my chest felt tender, as if one wrong move could snap my sternum still healing from surgery.
A chunky left came my way and I paddled for it as if it were my final wave, momentarily forgetting the sharp pain across my ribs. To my surprise I felt the familiar lift and glide under the 6’4” quite early. I was up and riding before the wave ledged over the shallow bar and was momentarily at a loss for what to do with all the kinetic energy underfoot, but soon found some rhythm and was on my way down the line.
Coming to the inside with a surprising amount of speed, I drew out a bottom turn, but mistimed my closing maneuver and was obliterated by the end section.
I’ve never been more stoked in my life
I took three waves in all that day.
After that first exhilarating left, two wide open, reeling rights after which I came in more exhausted and euphoric than after any session I can remember.
It had only been an hour or so but took a toll, what with the long break in surf sessions and all the chemo drugs coursing through my veins destroying cells.
I stashed the Album in the back of my car and retreated to the wooden overlook to watch the fading swell with all the bird watchers and toothless old salts gnawing on their cheap cigars.
A light wind had picked up cross offshore blowing off the tops of the waves and making little hollow sections on the inside.
A flock of gulls glided by, fishing boats returned from outer reefs. That kid was still out there ripping, hucking throwaway airs on the end section.
I was glad for him and watched intently hoping he’d go on ripping for many years, never getting cancer or a broken bone or even mistiming a turn.
(Editor’s note: Greg Mitchell is an LA-based woodworker who builds handcrafted furniture for his company West of Noble, “inspired by a lifetime of various creative pursuits, odd jobs, musical and literary influences, long stretches of no money and few prospects, barely running vintage cars, south american surf travel, and friends and family.”)
