Scratching the Horizon

by Izzy Paskowitz

  Life was good.

  * * *

  Might as well finish up with the last of our childbirth stories, long as I’m on it, before doubling back and telling the rest.

  Eli, our third, was a classic surprise. He was what a less enlightened parent would call a mistake, but “surprise” sounds a whole lot better—and, really, it’s way more accurate. Gets to the heart of how he arrived, what his arrival meant to our little family. Yeah, “mistake” works, too, but I’ve made a ton of mistakes in my life that didn’t work out like this. Like this was a godsend—another blessing to round out the set. But before Eli came along and surprised us, we certainly weren’t thinking of having another kid. Elah and Isaiah were about all we could handle. In fact, Isaiah all by himself was about all we could handle, because at about a year he started exhibiting symptoms of autism. We didn’t know what it was just yet, only that his behavior was off. Way off. This, too, was a surprise, because up until this time he’d been developmentally on point. Crawled when he was supposed to. Said his first “maa maa, daa daa”–type words when he was supposed to. Made good and appropriate eye contact and seemed as plugged in and engaged as any other toddler—certainly, as plugged in and engaged as his sister had been. He even started walking before his first birthday, which everybody said was a big deal.

  With Isaiah, the changes were subtle at first—the kind only a mother would notice. The kind a clueless, head-in-the-clouds father would choose to miss. Danielle was around way more than I was during this period, but even more than that, she was attuned to this type of thing. As a parent, she was superattentive and supervigilant about the health and welfare of our children. Me, I was more about hanging out and having fun with them, so for a couple years I was in complete denial about Isaiah. I didn’t see what Danielle was seeing—because, hey, when it came to my kids, they were just right, pretty damn perfect, straight out of a fairy tale. Whenever Danielle would get all anxious about some Isaiah behavior or other, I’d remind her that I had been a quiet kid; I’d tell her how there was so much noise and nonsense in our camper household, I became shy and reserved, and that maybe that’s what was going on here. Whatever her concerns, I’d explain them away, or tell her she was all wrong.

  After a while, it got harder to explain away Isaiah’s behavior. He started flapping his arms and doing this screeching-yelling thing he still does, tends to spook people out when they hear it for the first time. All of these little tics and mannerisms and idiosyncrasies started to turn up, but slowly, subtly, softly. They’d get bigger and louder and more pronounced over time, and as they did we’d see less and less of Isaiah. He was in there, somewhere, we felt sure, but however connected and plugged in he’d been as a toddler, however “normal” and by-the-book, it began to slip away, to where even I had to admit that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

  We started taking Isaiah to a bunch of doctors. We did MRIs, and EEGs, and all these different tests. One doctor thought Isaiah might have some sort of brain tumor, and we were actually hoping this was the case because it would be something we could fix, so we didn’t know how to feel when all those scans checked out clean. Every doctor said something different … until they all started saying the same thing: autism. We heard it like some dreaded diagnosis, because we didn’t know what it meant. We didn’t know where it came from, or how to handle it, so right away Danielle started doing all this research, trying to learn as much as she could, quick as she could. I went the other way. I shut down. I checked out. I simply refused to accept that there could be something so wrong with my son, my perfect little boy, so I brushed it aside. Danielle was terrified; I was more thrown. Wasn’t what I was expecting, not at all, so I took my time processing it, ran from confused to pissed, mystified to sad, and all the way back to confused. Told myself whatever I needed to tell myself to get through my days. And, worst of all, I doubled down on my tournament schedule and started looking for reasons to travel to all these remote beaches, all over the world.

  Basically, I shut my eyes and covered my ears and went surfing. Left it to Danielle to hold things together at home. Not exactly the most mature or loving or responsible approach, but all I could do was wish myself away, away, away.

  More on my chickenshit response to Isaiah’s diagnosis a bit later on; for now, I want to get back to Eli. Poor Danielle had nightmares the whole time she was pregnant with Eli. And she wasn’t just worried this next kid would be autistic. Everything was on the table: she thought the baby would be deformed or unhealthy in some other way; in one recurring dream, the baby was born with a cleft palate, so she let her mind run. Whatever headline or TV movie-of-the-week she came across, describing some tragedy or other, that’s what she’d worry about; it was really tough on her, and I was no help.

  The week before Eli was born, I did something stupid that only added to Danielle’s anxiety: I gave Isaiah a haircut. This alone wasn’t so bad, I’d given him haircuts before, but this time I gave him a Mohawk—I think because he’d pointed to a picture in a magazine and I thought he’d like it. Big mistake. Plus, it was a shitty, homemade, uneven Mohawk. My little guy looked ridiculous, so I gave myself a bad Mohawk to match, and it would have been no big deal except Danielle was all hormonal and she was already worried about the baby, already beside herself about Isaiah, and now every time she looked at her two men we struck her like a still frame out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, like we belonged in some mental institution. She actually cried a couple times, looking at us, so I felt like I’d really screwed up.

  The other stupid thing I did was stop for a burger on the way to the hospital when Danielle went into labor with Eli. It was early in the morning, but we passed a Carl’s Jr. and I realized I hadn’t eaten, so I pulled into the drive-thru. Danielle was ripshit. And then, when I started wolfing down my burger as I drove, she started to retch from the smell. Clearly, it was a bonehead, piggish move.

  Eli popped out in no time at all, just like his brother—and this last development kept the worry alive in Danielle. He was superhealthy, bigger than the other two, and there was nothing wrong with him, he was just a perfect, perfect baby, but all through his first year or two Danielle was completely on top of Eli, hovering over every little milestone. She measured everything against how old Elah had been, and what the books said, and what Isaiah had been doing at that same age.

  And she measured my behavior against what it had been for Elah and Isaiah, back when I was fully engaged and present, when things were easy, when life was good, when the specter of autism didn’t hang over our house like a dark cloud. And as I set these thoughts to paper, now, I’m realizing that Eli got screwed. In a lot of ways, big and small, the kid caught a raw deal. He didn’t do anything but show up and smile, and all around him there was this shit storm of worry and weirdness. Ended up, Eli got gypped. Absolutely, he got gypped. Danielle and I were so focused on Isaiah, on everything it meant to have a young child with autism, that Eli never got the attention he deserved—Elah, too, but at least in her case she got a year or so of our full attention before Isaiah was born. Before I turned tail and hid out on the tour.

  Even now that he’s a teenager, Eli is always taking a backseat to his brother’s needs. And in some ways, he probably always will. There’s no avoiding it, but it kills me just the same. It kills me because Eli’s such a tough, resilient kid. Smart. Funny. A little wise beyond his years. He’s like an old soul, because he sees everything that goes on in our semi-functional family and he weighs in with a kind of uncanny wisdom. He knows all, he sees all … but he doesn’t get to be a garden-variety kid. Sometimes, I watch him go about his business and it feels to me like he’s some intelligent alien being, sent to live among us nut job Paskowitzes to set us straight.

  And here’s another thing: Eli doesn’t surf. It’s not that he doesn’t surf at all, just that he doesn’t care to surf. Don’t get me wrong, he knows how to surf. He’s actually got the stuff to be a strong surfer, if he wanted. But he doesn’t want it. He
doesn’t live to surf, the way his dad, his grandfather, his uncles lived to surf. The way his sister lived to surf, for a time. I’m not such a complete ass that I attach any great significance to this, but I’d be less than honest if I said it didn’t break my heart, at least a little. It does. It’s like a sweet sadness that follows me around, whenever I stop to think about it, because I used to dream about having a little boy who’d follow me into the water. Same way my father had all his little boys following him into the water. Same way a lot of my surfing buddies are now watching their own kids become strong, competitive, champion surfers. It’s a selfish take, I know. And it pains me to admit it. But there it is.

  These selfish dreams didn’t die with Eli, of course. When Isaiah was born, back before he was diagnosed, back before any of us had the first idea what we were facing, I held those same hopes and dreams for him. I’d wanted my firstborn son to know the joy and thrill of surfing, but that was not meant to be, so I guess I probably attached even more importance to this idea when Eli turned up.

  But Eli had something else in mind, and I’ve learned to embrace his hopes and dreams and set my own aside. Lately, he’s shown some serious chops as a musician—perhaps drawing on the other sides of his gene pool. He’s got my mother’s tremendous ear for music, and on Danielle’s side he’s got my father-in-law’s sense of rhythm and timing. Eli’s actually a gifted and accomplished drummer, just like his grandfather and his uncle Damian, so I’m grateful that he’s got his own blend of silent fuel to drive his days. Doesn’t have to be my thing. Just has to be his thing, right? Took me a while to realize that, but I got to it eventually.

  11

  Winding Up, Winding Down

  My move was to hit the road when things got tough at home. I gave myself an out. I would pretend to lose myself in my “work” and ignore the fact that the only one doing any real work in our household was my beautiful and tolerant and put-upon wife.

  I had it good, hiding out on the professional tour, avoiding whatever was going on with Isaiah. Not as good as I thought, not as good as it had been, but far better than I deserved. Danielle was struggling to hold it together, dealing with Isaiah’s tantrums and impossible-to-predict behavior, while I was traveling the globe, surfing, having a big old time. And it’s not like I was earning a real living: I surfed, partied, drank myself stupid; next day, I’d go at it again; at the end of each road trip, I’d empty my pockets and see I’d spent almost every dollar I’d made, so it’s like I was treading water. Doesn’t seem fair, looking back, and I wish like hell I could reclaim some of that time and do a better job holding up my end, but that’s not how it works. How it works is you learn to live with the choices you made and do what you can to fix the damage you caused by those choices.

  Don’t know that I’m quite there yet, but I’m still working on it.

  For a professional surfer, life on the road can be a wild, heinous ride and I made sure to wring the most out of it. Even when I’d fallen off the lip of the wave and stopped competing at the top, top level, I found ways to justify each trip—like the time I flew to Bordeaux when the kids were little for an Oxbow tournament in the south of France. I had no business going, not really, but I went anyway. The world champion phase of my career had come and gone, but I was still competitive, still high-profile enough to attract a couple sponsors. I was riding my own line of boards at the time, which were shaped by Timmy Patterson, although my main sponsor was Hang Ten; the way it worked was we’d come up with a budget for my travel and expenses and they’d cut me a check. Back then, we had to book our own flights and make our own arrangements on the ground, but the check was meant to cover our costs. Our sponsors wouldn’t put us up in high-end, luxury accommodations, but they’d find some middle-of-the-road hotel and use that as the standard; then they’d come up with a reasonable pier diem to cover our food and rental cars and whatever else we’d need for the run of the tournament. Of course, their standards tended to be much higher-end than mine, so I’d stay at crappy hotels, or maybe bunk with a couple buddies, and pocket the difference; then I’d be sure to eat and drink on the cheap, wherever possible. (In France, this meant lots of wine and cheese and canned sardines.) This way, I’d be guaranteed to take home something, no matter if the waves were with me or against me.

  That’s basically what happened in Bordeaux. Wound up making some money, but only in this lame, passive-aggressive way, selling my own damn surfboards and pinching my expenses. Wasn’t exactly the point of the whole trip—aw, hell, it was a bottom-scraping move!—but I was keeping up a not-so-proud Paskowitz family tradition, grabbing at what I could.

  Here’s how that one trip went down: I ran into my buddy Jeff Kramer at the de Gaulle airport and we decided to throw in together. You never knew who you’d see on the way to these tournaments, but you’d always run into someone. Jeff and I spotted each other across the terminal; we were each hauling four or five longboards, which we used to carry in these superheavy boxes. That’s how we made our way through the world’s airports, lugging these giant coffins in our wake. People used to ask me what was in the box, which really did look like a coffin, and I’d tell them it was my father. I’d say I was flying his body to his favorite beach so he could be buried at sea, and folks would look at me funny and start to back away.

  In those days, I didn’t have a credit card, so I couldn’t rent a car. Don’t know that I would have sprung for the expense, but I didn’t even have the option, so wherever I went I’d just take buses or walk or bum rides—not so easy with a coffin full of boards. I can still remember dragging those boards through the airport with Jeff, figuring how to get where we were going. For some reason, the airport in Bordeaux was covered with dog shit. It was the filthiest airport I’d ever seen, and we were dragging these boxes through these piles of dog shit, because you couldn’t even lift them, so it was just a huge, disgusting pain in the ass—a sick metaphor, I thought, for what my career had become.

  Finally, we were lugging our gear across the parking lot when we saw Josh Baxter, another surfer from back home. He was driving a big, minivan-type vehicle. I thought, Yeah, Team California! Sweet! We flagged him down, but he didn’t seem too keen to help us out. He was worried about his own Timmy board—this superfragile, superlight glass prototype he’d just gotten. Jeff and I offered to throw our boards up top, so they wouldn’t damage his precious Timmy. Josh looked for a beat like he was trying to work something out, seeing if he could get all our boards to fit, but then he drove off and left us by the side of the road.

  The contest was held in a small town just south of Biarritz. (We ended up hitching some other ride—no thanks to our homey, Josh Baxter.) A bunch of us ended up staying in a little shit-hole motel, had to drag our boards up a couple flights of stairs. I remember thinking this was a helluva long way to travel, just to stay in a shit-hole motel in a tiny seaside village, but as soon as I hit the beach I realized why we were there. The surf was absolutely gigantic. Really, it was a big, big wave—one of the scariest, ugliest waves I’d ever paddled into. The other surfers were all checking it out and they seemed pretty pumped, but to a guy like me, that stage in my career, this was only a little bit exciting; mostly, it was terrifying, because I’d never been a good big-wave rider. I was never comfortable staring down a massive swell, but when I was younger I’d suck it up and go for it; now that I was a bit older, I didn’t see the point. In this way, I was cut like my father; I’d push myself to ride those beasts, but I was never too happy about it.

  In all, there were about two hundred surfers competing in this one event. A lot of the Oxbow guys had come from Brazil and Japan, but there was a strong American contingent—a lot of Hawaiians, certainly, and a big crew from California. I saw a bunch of guys I knew from San Clemente, which was always great when you were so far from home. Some would treat you like family and do anything for you, and then there were others who’d just leave you by the side of the road; the trick came in knowing the difference before you got out pas
t the break.

  The idea was to arrive a couple days ahead to get comfortable with the wave, which worked well with the rest of my agenda, which was to duck out on the hassle and heartache back home. It helped if I could hang on until the day of the finals and justify my absence, but that wasn’t always how it worked out. At this Oxbow tournament, I made it past the first heat, but then I got disqualified, so once I was tossed I looked to sell my boards. I’d already busted two in competition, but then I met some folks who sparked to the two I had left. One, a tremendous big-wave board, I loaned to my buddy Joel Tudor, who ended up winning the championship with it, so that added a little bit of value.

  Typically, when I traveled to an event, I wanted to bring along a whole bunch of options. It’s good to have a board for all different types of surf; sometimes your alternate board winds up being your go-to board on the day of the tournament, or sometimes you just feel like riding an old-school longboard when the waves are breaking a certain way. You never know how things will go, and you want to be prepared, but once I was out of the competition there was no reason to keep slugging those boards around Europe, so I sold them. For good money, too.

  The reason I was disqualified was weirdly ironic. The waves for the second heat were killer—fifteen feet, in spots. I thought I was in position on a kind of peaky wave, thought I could ride it in for a good score. I was on the inside, on the right, and I could have gone either way with it, but just as I was getting ready to commit, Josh Baxter started paddling into the same damn wave, a beat or two ahead of me. I was always mindful of the great Skip Frye and the lesson of his example, so I tried to clear a path for Josh, so he wouldn’t be disqualified. Instead, I ended up making a sudden turn the opposite way, in front of Josh, and I ended up disqualified. What happened was Josh had stood up on his board first, so he rightfully had “possession” of the wave; any move I made at that point would have sent me packing. It was a selfless move, and it came from a good place, but it was also a bonehead, panicked move—and just like that, my tournament was done, all because I was trying to give a ride to a guy who couldn’t even be bothered to give me a ride back at the airport a couple days earlier.