Hand Over Mouth
“I’ve been reduced on certain magnificent days... to just drifting on the shoulder, gawking at the transformation of ordinary seawater into beautifully muscled swell, into feathering urgency, into pure energy, impossibly sculpted, ecstatically edged, and finally into violent foam.”
It’s my favorite picture. The one with my hand over my mouth. Tears falling from my eyes that show a wild, joyous expression. Hand over mouth, with all my fingers glued together, a muzzle, a container of triumph as if it could burst through the seams; the mouth being the place where it leaks first. I selfishly hoard these sensations. Not an ounce of this jubilation to leave the body. The special kind of joy wanting to seep like an overstuffed suitcase you have to sit on to close the zipper. Screw the overweight baggage fee, I’m taking it all. No scraps or drops to be left behind.
Hand over mouth slows this process. Hand over mouth keeps the joy inside. You know the reaction. The “Miss America” I call it. The “I can’t believe this is happening” reaction we all secretly or not-so-secretly poke fun at.
This treasured picture of myself captured during my skating career was just that. Me. Hand over mouth. I had just won my first Nationals. I’m in the Kiss and Cry, the throne-like area where we receive our scores, and I’m with my coach. Her fist is in the air with a victorious triumph, a wide-mouthed, toothy smile and me in the background. My eyes are ablaze, tears streaming down, a small space where these big feelings are visible. The frenzied elation, the joy-- unparalleled.
I left skating to heal. I left skating to heal both myself and my relationship with my body that the sport and its sometimes-toxic body-image culture had been a catalyst. I left skating to heal, but I also knew that I had closed the door on so much more. I shoved my skates in the back of my closet at my parent’s house, a signal to myself of complete resignation-- much like burning my ex-boyfriend’s t-shirt because it still smells like him. I put my skates away in the back of the closet of my childhood bedroom and out of my sight. With much sadness and a tinge of regret, I knew it was time to move on. But within my leaving, as I hoisted them into their new cozy and sequestered corner, I had flashes in my mind of the happiest of times. A cinema of memories that made me happy cry. That time with my hand over my mouth.
I didn’t think I’d ever be able to have a hand over my mouth moment again. What a shame.
Months after I moved to Hawaii I knew that the absence of skating would mean that something else had to take its place. I’m one of those people who can’t live in a void for too long. Living in Hawaii means there’s limited options for this void-filling conquest, so naturally-- I turned to surfing.
There’s a beauty and solace I had found in surfing, and it was in the smallest of reasons.
There are no mirrors in surfing. There’s no scales. There’s no mean, fat-shaming Russian coaches. There’s no concern with gaining weight during puberty or having the “right body type”. Surfing is inclusive. Some of my favorite surfers on this island are middle aged men with Dad bods, committed to dawn patrolling The Bay every morning. They inspire me. They surf like gazelles. They are not judged for their bodies.
Eventually surfing held a gun to my head in the best of ways, and I became its hostage. Just as Kelly Slater says, “Surfing is like the mafia, once you’re in, you can’t get out.”
There was a day in 2021 where I paddled out to a break called Summers in the middle of a hot and sticky July summer day. Summers is a less-than-original name for a far out, middle of the ocean reef break about 200 yards from the old St. Regis beach-- on the North Shore of Kauai. It’s almost criminal how beautiful it is. Clear blue water, cascading waterfalls in the distance, coconut palms littering the shoreline. Although Hanalei is known for its waves in the winter months, Summers is the spot during the Summer months when the waves die down and the Bay becomes a lake. However, the direction of the wave is versatile, and it can pick up a bit of South (swell) energy when it’s strong enough to wrap around the island. This was a day when South energy was strong enough to bring beautiful, clean and pumping waves to this special little break.
I waded in the water about waist-deep as I waxed my board, watching sets roll in and felt my stomach clench. It was bigger than I was comfortable with. “Head high” is typically kryptonite for longboarders like me, but back then, it felt like a death trap.
My two friends start to paddle past me and into the channel, giggling like kids in a candy store. I scrambled to put on my leash and jump on my board, and I’m quickly a few feet behind my way-too-keen, way-too-confident friends. They grew up in the ocean. They rip. I surf with them for a reason.
I paddle fast to catch up, digging my hands and forearms into the water- an efficiency, a skill only learned through relentless practice. My breathing becomes heavier, and the pounding and falling of mass amounts of water and force overcomes each exhale. The violent sounds of these waves was more cacophonous than I was comfortable with. Still, I persist. I edge closer and begin to feel the habitual astonishment and insignificance that comes with the territory of dancing with the humbling and unforgiving ocean. I am an ant. I’m an ant next to a large, alive, and relentless string of watery mountains forming slowly in the horizon.
I glace at my friends, and they give me a smirk. They say it all without saying a thing: Are you going to surf, or are you going to bail?
Look. I didn’t do big waves back then. They knew I didn’t do big waves. They were likely thinking I was going to turn around. I always turn around. Something within me didn’t want to cower. Something within me decided to stay. Not this time, boys.
I keep paddling. I make it to the outside, the safe space where the waves don’t break. I straddle my board and look down at my shaking hands, then forward to the horizon, back down to my shaking hands.
I sit there. I do not move. I’m in the middle of the damn Pacific Ocean with my shaking hands, searching for the bravery. It was left somewhere on the shoreline and buried in the granules of sand on the coconut palm littered beach, too beautiful to care about my rationally irrational fears.
I decide I’m going to surf. I came to surf. I used to hurl myself into the air on footknives, for god’s sake. What could be worse than that?
At that time, I caught the biggest wave of my life that day. The white water was at my head. When I made it to the end of the very long 100 plus yard ride, I kicked out, turned around and straddled my board.
Hand. Over. Mouth.
Hand instinctually over my mouth. I floated in that space bobbing in the ocean with the shallow reef tickling my feet and watched the waves following mine. Astonished that I had let the momentum of these monsters carry me. Hand stayed over mouth.
It dawned on me. A thought came barreling into my brain in the same way that watery mountain came at me, as if it had my name on it. Hand over mouth, it’s still a reaction to be had. Figure skating was not its only source.
That single wave-- it changed me. Surfing had morphed into a beacon. The light that this obsession had shone onto me started as a pinhole. It slowly over time expanded to a wide-open window-- where its sunshine beams into my heart space and the yellow curtains of joy flap in the warm, gentle breeze. Surfing insinuated a slow, subtle transformation, but the clarity of my healing came the second the palm of my hand cupped my lips. The heavy and burdensome thoughts about my body were alchemized into pure and unadulterated joy.
The previous incessant pokes and prods that were the thoughts about this body centered around how big or small it appeared to be seemed to dissipate. How the fat surrounding my belly button or the jiggle of my thighs as I walked became less of a concern, even for fleeting seconds at a time. Surfing transformed my narrative about my body by simply changing my perspective into what my body simply could do.
That day surfing Summers, it was my vessel--not my identity. The astonishment of this strong and tactile meatsuit, its infinite capabilities, the priceless container that carries me through this life. It still worked in my favor, no matter what the fuck it looked like. Surfing opened up the cracks of my soul that abandoned my body and was the impetus for this new sense of awe. A newfound relationship, that of healthy admiration.
I’ll have that to reach for, for the rest of my life. Surfing showed me peace and helped me dig for the white flag buried deep into my pockets and tissues, signaling a surrender. The battle with this body has began to lose its grip. We were no longer at war.
When someone asks why I love to surf so much, I tell them it’s not always about surfing. It’s so much more than that.
So I peeled my fingers away, one at a time-- from the coverage of my mouth. I backed off my board and floated in the ocean like a sea otter, surrendering to the magnitude of this light bulb-like moment. I was weightless, buoyant, immersed in the sea in her big and unfolding arms with the weight of gravity absent. I felt light and limitless. I floated in this state of surrender as I stared up at the blue, blue sky, and I noticed this familiar feeling bubbling up from my bones.
It was love.
I felt only love.