Diane Cardwell - Rockaway: Surfing Headlong Into a New Life

Copyright 2020 by Diane Cardwell

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cardwell, Diane, 1964 author.

Title: Rockaway : surfing headlong into a new life / Diane Cardwell.

Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019045702 (print) | LCCN 2019045703 (ebook) | ISBN 9780358067788 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780358307136 | ISBN 9780358311270 | ISBN 9780358067825 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Cardwell, Diane, 1964 | Women surfersUnited StatesBiography. | African American surfersBiography | SurfingUnited StatesBiography. | Women journalistsUnited StatesBiography. | African American journalistsBiography. | Divorced WomenUnited StatesBiography. | Rockaway Beach (New York, N.Y.)Biography.

Classification: LCC GV 838. C 34 A 3 2020 (print) | LCC GV 838. C 34 (ebook) | DDC 797.3/2092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045702

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045703

Select text excerpts from the essay High Water first appeared in the January 2013 issue of Vogue. Written and used by permission of the author.

Several chapters include portions of Rising Tide of Money Erodes a Long Island Holdout and Surfing Headlong into a New Life, both by Diane Cardwell, which originally appeared in the New York Times on July 2, 2010, and on May 31, 2015, respectively, are copyright the New York Times and used here by permission.

Map by Chrissy Kurpeski

Author photograph Nina Subin

Cover photograph: Getty Images/Cavan Images

Cover design: Michaela Sullivan

v1.0620

February 2013

Still I must on; for I am as a weed

Flung from the rock, on Oceans foam to sail

Whereer the surge may sweep, the tempests breath prevail.

LORD BYRON, Childe Harolds Pilgrimage

Is this how it ends?

The thought burned through my head, surprising and unbidden. I was straddling a surfboard in a thrashing ocean, breathless and struggling to stay upright, my arms so tired and aching I could barely lift them. Looking up, I saw my friends waiting for me on the shore, but they and the palm trees lining the cliffs all appeared to be receding. Id been trying to get back to the beach for what felt like an eternity, and every time I took a moments rest the heaving aquamarine waters tugged me farther away from the stretch of sand I needed to reach. I felt overwhelmed and small, as if in the clutches of a liquid bully tossing me this way and that, while wind whipped my dark, wet curls against my cheeks, salt spray stung my eyes, and surging water plugged my ears and gushed into my mouth and up my nose. The current was pulling me parallel to the coast, where bulkheads of razor-sharp coral and rocks could shred my flesh like a cat-o-nine-tails. As my body started to fail, it dawned on me for the first time that I might not make it back.

Just an hour before, Id been relaxed and happy. Id arrived at the beach near the northwest corner of Puerto Rico with a friend, a feisty, green-eyed brunette Id met back home as Id haplessly tried to learn to surf over the past few years. She was not only my regular buddy in the waves but also one of the first new friends Id made in a decadepart of the social life I was building as I slowly emerged from the wreckage of a divorce. Rented boards in hand, we were excited to escape the February chill of New York City and the rubble-strewn mess of my neighborhood in Rockaway Beach, still in recovery from the battering of Superstorm Sandy. Standing under the canopy of fanning leaves in the dirt parking lot overlooking the beach, we ran into a few friends from Rockaway who had just finished their sessions. Sure, it was a little choppy, with the swirl of the current making spirals of white foam amid the translucent peaks, but the waves were weaker than they looked, one of them said, and not much to worry about.

Watch out for the current, though, another friend told us. Make sure you dont let it take you out to the left. Just paddle at an angle the other way.

Maybe I shouldnt do this, Id thought, eyeing the waves as they reared up and twisted before violently crashing toward the shore. But Id quickly silenced that voice. As long as I kept to the right, Id be fine. Id always been able to handle myself in the ocean at home on the East Coast, and I was aching for the balm of wild water on my skinI just couldnt resist.

Plus I needed this break from the rest of my life, which felt in shambles. Over the past five years Id been lashed by loss after lossmy marriage, my father, my chances of bearing a child. I was, in every sense of the word, adrift.

Surfing, despite my distinct lack of aptitude and struggles to find my balance in the ocean, consistently brought me joy and a sense of purpose. On a surfboard I could feel powerful and free and in tune with the universe, if only for an instant. The rest of the time I felt the opposite.

And now there was a clear and present danger confronting me. After I had stepped into the warm, inviting water sliding over the sand, I had focused so intently on charging through the walls of foam lining up in front of me that I hadnt noticed the current, stronger than I realized, taking me exactly where I didnt want to go: to the left.

So despite my efforts to paddle back, I was now stuck outsidethe term surfers use for the zone beyond where the waves are breakingand far from where I could safely return to shore. My surf buddy was nowhere to be seen in the water, having probably, and wisely, ditched the effort sooner. It doesnt matter how many people youre surfing with, I thought. In the end youre alone, just you and the ocean.

What if I cant get in by myself? I wondered as I contemplated my predicament. I closed my eyes and saw an unlikely fever-dream pastiche of lost-at-sea images: sunburned survivors found in life rafts, having subsisted on raw fish, birds, and their own urine; old-style paintings of half-nude women, shipwrecked and flung upon the sand; headlines about teenagers whod fallen prey to rip tides, seemingly every year, in the Rockaways; the Andrea Gail, buffeted by mammoth seas before sinking; Gilligan and the Skipper losing control of the S.S. Minnow on what was supposed to be a three-hour tour.

I peered at the beach. I was even farther from my friends, who now looked like stick figures on the sand. Can they tell Im in trouble? Can they call in a rescue? Can I hold on long enough, or will I get swept out to sea? Are there sharks out there?

Resting, I tried to tamp down the rising sense of dread, but I couldnt keep other kinds of doubts from creeping in. Maybe I was just not meant for this. If Id so wrongly assumed I was ready for this ocean, I might very well have been wrongly convinced that I could actually have a roll-with-the-swells surfers lifethat I could, in middle age, pivot from my get-ahead, career-focused existence to something that seemed more meaningful. Maybe it was too late for that, just like it was too late to save my marriage, too late to get pregnant, too late to find another great love. I was clinging to a rented surfboard and maybe to a rented lifeone I could dip into from time to time but couldnt really make my own. I looked around and took in the spectacular beauty of the place, seeing how close to and yet still so far from safety I was. What a ridiculous place to die.