At this point, it was a little after eight o’clock; the wedding was in less than two hours. We were only a couple miles from the church, but we had to swing by Abraham’s place so I could shower and change into my tuxedo. The other guys all disappeared into their own rides, while I hopped into Abraham’s run-down BMW. It was such a crap set of wheels, we couldn’t help but laugh. When we were younger, fresh out of the camper and scraping to buy our first used cars, we took a kind of youthful pride in what we were driving—throwaway American muscle cars, mostly, but we took such good and loving care of these vehicles. (My ’65 Impala is a perfect example.) But at some point, with Abraham, he flipped a switch, to where it was more about the brand than the ride itself. He’d always wanted a BMW, and this piece-of-shit was what he could afford; part of me worried if the thing could even get us to the church.
Happily, the car did its job. It was me who nearly didn’t make it there. First we had to have a couple beers. After all, this was my wedding day, right? There was a lot to toast … and, it turned out, Abraham had laid in a cooler’s worth of Pacifico. I showered between beers, jumped into my tuxedo, got started on my tie. My hair was still wet as I dressed, so my collar was soaked through, but I was making good time—that is, until I drained one Pacifico and popped another cold one. And another. Somehow, the time got away from us. Don’t know what it was or how it happened, but all of a sudden it was almost ten o’clock—“go” time. Guess I was so distracted by all this different crap I had to wear, all these component parts to my tuxedo, making sure I didn’t forget anything … I just messed up. Spent a bunch of minutes in there looking for Danielle’s ring.
Ah, the ring … a head-turning, no-karat, no-grade, no-clarity stunner I picked up at Target for $180. The setting had four micro-tiny stones that had a beautiful dark color to them, which was about what I could afford, but Danielle didn’t care. She only cared that I could haul ass to the church in time to put the damn thing on her finger.
Meanwhile, over at the church, people were starting to freak, wondering where we were. Scott Ruedy had gone back directly from the beach, along with Danielle’s brother, Damian, and the rest of my brothers, and they reported that I’d finished with my preliminary heat and was on my way, so the woman who was coordinating everything decided we were on schedule. The rest of the bridal party was all there, so they started up the music, the procession … everything. Folks were walking down the aisle, and soon it was the bride’s turn to walk down the aisle, and they just kept on going. It was like a runaway train. The wedding was underway, with or without the groom.
This all came to me later; all I knew at the time was we were running late. Not too, too late, but late enough. Apparently, Danielle was starting her walk down the aisle, looking mighty pissed. Mad as she was, though, she didn’t have a single doubt about my intentions. She knew I didn’t have cold feet; she knew I wasn’t bailing. She just knew I’d fucked up, was all.
As I raced into the church, I glanced down and saw my father’s shabby, caulked-together shoes, same pair from the night before. They were kind of tucked beneath the bushes by the entrance—tucked neatly, the way you’d rest a pair of slippers at the edge of your bed—and I had to laugh. Also, I had to wonder: Did he wear them back to the church this morning and suddenly remember they were all wrong? Was he barefoot? Did he leave them here last night? It looked like that scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy’s house has fallen on the Wicked Witch of the East and all you can see are her ruby-red slippers, only here it was like St. Edward’s had fallen on poor Doc as he arrived to watch the first of his Jewish sons get married … in a Catholic ceremony.
Don’t know why, but it struck me as just about the funniest thing.
Soon as I walked in the front door of the church, I was hurried down the aisle. Danielle was halfway down by that point, figuring out that I was not yet in position. I watched the video afterwards, and she looked so stunning, so pissed, so bewildered; her beautiful doe eyes were frantically scanning the room, trying to figure out what was happening, and in the moment I remember trying to avoid eye contact with her, because I knew she’d rip into me. I shot right past her on my way down the aisle and I tried to flash a look of apology, but she gave me the cold shoulder as I passed.
Other than the mess I made by running late, the wedding went off without a hitch. Before it was over, Danielle was all smiles and it was all good between us. And the reception, up the bluff at the Chart House, was kick-ass. Lots of good food, good music, good beer. One of the highlights of the reception was doing whiskey shots with Doc, pulled from a hundred-year-old bottle he’d been saving for a special occasion. He never drank, other than a cup of wine on the Sabbath, but some patient had given him the bottle years ago as payment for a visit or a consult back in Hawaii, and this seemed like a good time to pop it open.
I was a little hungover for the finals the next morning. Danielle, the new Mrs. Paskowitz, came down to the beach, and by this point she was fine with my wedding day screwup; by this time it had already become a story we’d tell over and over … someday, to our grandchildren. Guess she realized this was about what she could expect, marrying a professional surf bum, and that I’d just been holding up my end of the deal.
Jonathan ended up out-surfing me in the finals. I took second. And, as always, I was happy for him; I’d kicked butt in the preliminaries and he’d kicked butt in the finals, and that’s how it shook out. I left the beach thinking, Good for him. And, Good for me. And, Good for all of us.
And it was.
* * *
It’s not like Danielle and I sat down and planned our lives together. Wasn’t our style. We both wanted kids—sooner rather than later, I guess—but Israelah snuck up on us. I’ll never forget the look of stunned joy on Danielle’s face when she told me she was pregnant, but I imagine it was a lot like the look of stunned joy on my face as it sunk in.
Most people, seeing how we were living and with a kid on the way, would think we might have been stressed about money, but that never entered into my thinking. Might have kept Danielle awake a time or two, but not me. The way I grew up left me thinking kids didn’t change a thing, in terms of your bottom line. What did it cost to have a kid, really? Just a package of diapers, every couple days. That’s it. Ten bucks a day. To me, that was within our means, so I took a no worries approach.
Besides, I was at the height of my career, surfing out of my mind. I knew it wouldn’t last forever, success at that level, so we couldn’t count on it going forward, but I also knew I’d be crazy not to make the most of it. There was one stretch in there when I won eleven major championships in less than two years, including three in a row—at Trestles, at the Rabbit Kekai in Boca Barranca, Costa Rica, and at the Coke event in Australia I wrote about earlier. Wasn’t a lot of prize money to be had on the circuit, but the endorsement money was rich enough to fool me into thinking I was making a living. For a couple years, I pulled in thirty thousand dollars or so, between winnings and sponsorship fees. One year, I even topped fifty thousand. That was the year I did a series of ads for Nike, with Bo Jackson, Andre Agassi, and Michael Jordan, so I was getting a ton of attention. When I threw it all together with the decent money I was still making up in Newport Beach cleaning boats, it was enough to keep us in surfboards and diapers.
Danielle had her gig at Surfer magazine, too, and it came with benefits, so we had the pregnancy and pediatrician covered. In most respects, we were better off than my folks had been when they started spitting out kids—even with my father’s medical degree.
We had a funky setup on a ranch owned by Danielle’s parents, high up in the hills of San Juan Capistrano. Wasn’t much of a ranch, really. Back then, it was more like a big open field, pretty damn far from civilization. It was way, way up off the main road, and you had to take a twisty, unpaved access road to get to it. It was so rustic we didn’t even have electricity when we started living there, had to operate everything off a hand-crank generator. We had the idea that w
e’d be like pioneers, which worked out great because Danielle was becoming more and more interested in horses, so there was plenty of room for her to ride and roam.
Turned out to be too much of a hassle, though. We’d come back to the property a bit later on, but at that stage of our lives it was too much, or not enough. It was one thing, getting up and down that hill under normal circumstances, but with a baby the twenty minutes it took each way left us feeling pretty isolated, like we needed to be a little closer to civilization, and a steady supply of hot water.
This was never more obvious than the moment Danielle’s water broke. Racing down that hill to Mission Hospital took forever; on those hairpin turns it felt like I was about to drive us straight off the bluffs. Probably, that was the first we talked about having to find another place to live. But first things first, we had a baby to deliver, and by the time we got to the hospital there were a whole bunch of Paskowitzes and Brawners who’d arrived ahead of us. This was the first legit grandchild on both sides, so everyone dropped what they were doing to get in on it. (“Legit” because, technically, Jonathan’s son was the first of his generation on the Paskowitz side, but Jonathan never really copped to being the boy’s father.) At one point, there were about fifty friends and family members gathered at the hospital, waiting on this kid’s arrival, so it was a grand welcome … until the nurse had to chase everyone out.
Don’t remember too much about the actual delivery except that Danielle was pushing and pushing. For six hours, she pushed. I wasn’t much use to Danielle, I don’t think, but she hung in there. We didn’t want to know the sex of the baby beforehand, but I knew it’d be a boy. Deep down, I knew. We were Paskowitzes, after all. And it wasn’t just me. Danielle seemed resigned to it, too, which explains the absolute bombshell rush of surprise that washed over each of us when the baby finally came. I’d thought about this moment about a million times, and it never occurred to me we’d have a girl.
Not once.
I was so happy for Danielle. She really, really wanted a little girl, and I think she’d been terrified to say as much during the pregnancy; mostly, I just don’t think it occurred to her it would work out that way. But it did. Thrillingly, amazingly, wonderfully … it did. I was blown away with how pumped I was for Danielle. It’s like I’d given her this miraculous gift, only I’d get to share in that gift, too. Every day, I’d get to share in it.
I was totally stoked myself. I’d never really given much thought to having a girl or a boy. In my family, growing up, there was all this great weight and significance attached to the idea of having a son, but I never bought into any of that. Really, it was a lot of crap. To me, the weight and significance came with having a beautiful, healthy child. That’s all. A girl or a boy, it didn’t matter—and I think it only mattered to Danielle in an icing-on-the-cake sort of way. But to me, little Israelah was the whole damn bakery.
I must say, I was a great dad. And a full partner in parenting. Don’t mean to blow smoke up my own butt, but I was very involved, very present. It helped that Israelah arrived in November, as the pro circuit slowed for the winter, so I was around a whole lot, but I was really into taking care of her and taking part. Danielle was breast-feeding, so there was a lot I couldn’t do, but she pumped enough for a nighttime bottle and I always took the middle-of-the-night shift. All night long, I’d just stare and stare at this beautiful little girl—my beautiful little girl. The bottle would be long gone, and Israelah would be fast asleep, but I’d just sit with her in my lap, for hours and hours.
After six weeks, Danielle went back to work. We needed the money, but even more than that, Danielle had it in her head she’d be a working mom. That was the idea, the ideal, so we moved into a small, two-bedroom apartment right above Danielle’s folks and I started spending most of my time running around with the baby. Danielle and I drove a Ford Escort in those days, and I’d be back and forth to all these different surf shops and warehouses around town, and it was always a trick to try to puzzle a bunch of surfboards into that tiny car. The only way to do it, really, was to slide them directly over Israelah’s infant seat, so I’d pull up someplace and a buddy would help me unload my boards and all of a sudden I’d hear, “Hey, there’s a baby under here!”
First couple times, I pretended to be surprised.
Most days, we’d swing by the magazine for lunch, so Danielle could breast-feed Israeleh, and I remember stepping outside myself during these moments and wondering what I’d done to deserve such as this. I couldn’t remember when I’d ever been happier.
Soon, we started calling the baby Elah, and the name seemed to fit. She was such a perfect, perfect baby. Never made a peep, other than to let us know she wouldn’t have minded a little something to eat, or maybe a diaper change. We even hauled her to Australia, for another tournament the year after my Coke Classic win, and I remember sitting down on the plane next to a couple of big old burly Aussies who didn’t look too happy at the prospect of spending the next fourteen, fifteen hours next to a crying baby, but she was amazing. Didn’t cry once, the whole way.
By the time we got back home to California, we realized Danielle was pregnant again, so the loose plan was to keep doing what we were doing. By our math, Elah would be a big sister at about sixteen months, and she hadn’t given us any trouble, so we thought things would continue to be fine and easy and wonderful. We thought all our babies would pretty much take care of themselves.
(Yeah, right.)
Danielle worked straight through her second pregnancy, while I did most of the hands-on heavy lifting with Elah during the day, whenever I was in town; when I wasn’t, Danielle’s folks would pitch in, so they were a big help. For a while, we lived in the apartment at the back of their house; for another while, we lived just down the street; always, they were nearby and happy to pitch in.
I made sure to be home for the weeks surrounding our due date, of course, and when Danielle finally went into labor I talked her into a little detour. I remembered that she’d been at it for hours with Elah, so I assumed we were in for another long haul and suggested we stop at the beach. We’d already parked Elah with her grandparents, so I pointed the car towards San O and figured I’d catch a couple waves before Danielle’s contractions got bigger and closer together.
Full disclosure: I only half-expected Danielle to join me in thinking this was a good idea, but I thought it was worth a shot. And do you know what? She was completely down with it. We both thought the sound of the surf and the smell of the sea would clear her mind for the ordeal ahead, so while she walked I grabbed my board and paddled out. I left Danielle by the shack on the beach, pacing back and forth, told her I’d keep checking in with her. It helped that she had a killer whistle—one of those loud, piercing trills that come in handy when you’re calling farm animals or expectant surf bum fathers who might have drifted from their posts. I was out there a half hour or so when I noticed Danielle waving me in—a little frantically, if you must know—and by the time I got to her she was doubled up in pain.
And she was pissed. All of a sudden, I was a selfish fucking idiot, for wanting to surf while Danielle was in full-blown labor—and I guess she had a point. (Forget that she’d been into it; it was my fault for bringing it up.) So I got her in the backseat of the car and started hauling ass to Mission Hospital. Earned ourselves a police escort on the way, and once we got to the emergency room and they wheeled her inside, Isaiah made an appearance just a short while later. Elah had taken her sweet time, but her brother arrived in less than twenty minutes.
Here again, we hadn’t found out about the gender, so when the doctor held the baby out and I peeked between his legs I was probably the happiest father in all of California. To see that little tally-whacker … man, I don’t think I’d ever been that excited. Felt like my head was about to burst. My heart, too.
Isaiah was an absolutely beautiful baby. He was big and thick, with almond eyes and a full head of hair. Looked a lot like me in my baby pictures, only a little
on the chubby side, which should have tipped us off to the kind of giant he’d become. He didn’t have the same easy disposition as his big sister, didn’t sleep as long or as soundly, but he was easy enough; it’s just that they were on completely different schedules, so it wasn’t long before Danielle and I were completely exhausted.
This time around, Danielle was in no rush to get back to work, which was just as well because Isaiah was born about a month ahead of the tournament season, so as soon as the first rush of fascination over the new baby wore off I was back at it. In between tournaments, I was hustling up to Newport Beach, to work with John on his boats, because Danielle and I knew money was going to be tight.
Elah was psyched to have a baby brother. She called him Prince, which she got from watching Bambi over and over. And it wasn’t just a name with her; she treated Isaiah’s arrival like he was the new prince of our little forest. She had the cutest baby-talk voice—high and gentle and sweet. She’d wake up in the morning and stand herself up in her crib and the first words out of her mouth were always, “Where’s Prince?”
It was an amazing time in our lives. Our kids were healthy and happy. I was still ripping on the tour, still squeezing as much money as possible out of a sport that was never really about money, still feeling completely on top of my game. And Danielle was happy to be at home with our beautiful babies.
Scratching the Horizon Page 19
