The only thing I was certain of before arriving at the beachfront campus of Modern Elder Academy in Baja, Mexico, was that I wouldn’t be surfing.
I was more than willing to dive headfirst into the murky waters of midlife, ready to navigate transitions that felt like hidden land mines and face whatever upheaval or uncertainty beckoned me to Baja to begin with.
But squeezing into a wetsuit, balancing on a board, and riding a wave powered by the sea itself? That felt like playing a game I couldn’t possibly win – and I hadn’t yet learned the value of that.
A few years earlier, I’d experienced a sudden and inexplicable loss of hearing in my left ear. Of all the things I didn’t know – why it happened, how to fix it – I did know anything that might throw off my equilibrium, especially underwater, could be disastrous. So when presented with the list of extracurricular activities for the week, surfing was a hard pass.
Until Thursday.
Our group was asked who would be surfing on Friday morning. Three hands shot up. Mine was one of them.
Maybe it was the magic of being surrounded by compadres moving through midlife with humor, poetry, and music that made me feel like anything was possible. Maybe it was the absence of societal expectations around aging that M/E/A embodies so beautifully that made me feel like I was in college again. Or maybe – finally – I was listening to what my body wanted.
My body wanted to surf.
I set my alarm for 4 a.m. the next morning and woke to the sound of Donovan Frankenreiter singing “Big Wave.” How that came to be my wake-up call, I may never know. But it was a glimmer—one of those micro-moments of unexpected joy, spontaneity, and connection—that shaped my surfing experience before I even hit the water.
At the beach for dawn patrol, I met my instructor: a kind, surf-savvy soul who seemed genuinely happy to see a sixty-year-old student in a wetsuit standing next to his surfboard. If he had any doubts about my abilities, he kept them to himself.
First, we practiced standing on the board in the sand before paddling into the ocean. (Did I mention that any activity where I might lose my sense of direction underwater might be disastrous?)
And yet, I never felt unsafe. My board and my instructor were by my side the entire time. Merely attempting something so outrageous gave me more confidence than I had any right to feel.
As a wave approached, my instructor guided me into it and shouted, “Penny, stand up! Stand up! Stand up, Penny!” He desperately wanted me to get off my hands and knees and stand upright on the board. I desperately wanted to cling to the board like it was a life raft.
I believe my response was, “No!” Or maybe it was, “Oh, hell no!”
If popping up to a standing position on sand was hard, popping up to a standing position on water was almost impossible.
But then, something miraculous happened.
After several wipeouts – and getting right back on the board each time—I stood up. I crouched into the surfing stance. I rode the wave all the way to shore… where I wiped out once again.
For me, surfing was Level Two Fun—not necessarily fun in the moment, but absolutely thrilling in hindsight.
A fellow compadre captured it all on camera. Without the photos, I might have convinced myself I made the whole thing up.
Surfing has been a metaphor for my creative life.
For years, I felt like I was ahead of the wave—a little too early on the consciousness scene, a little too “out there,” and a touch too weird to be accepted by a reasonable crowd. So I treaded water, trying to stay afloat, until wave after unrelenting wave of change left me feeling wiped out and washed up.
But in Baja, something shifted.
I stopped fighting the current. I heard my heart actually beat. I honored my timeless wisdom. I followed my unique rhythm.
The time had come for me to integrate all I’d learned and ride this wave.
Maybe not gracefully.
Maybe not easily.
Maybe not for long.
But knowing I can? That makes all the difference.