Scratching the Horizon

by Izzy Paskowitz

  We gave Isaiah his meds in liquid form back then; he wouldn’t take pills, although we experimented with the gummy bear–type squares that the pharmaceutical companies were just starting to put out. Anything to get the medication down. He wasn’t crazy about the gummy squares, but they were better than the pills. He didn’t like the liquid, either, but it was usually our best option.

  Eating was a whole other adventure. Little smells would send Isaiah over the edge. If I took him into an Arby’s, or some other fast-food place, he’d instantly puke. It was like pouring syrup of ipecac directly into his mouth. When we finally hit the road in the Mitsubishi for the long ride home, the hardest part was finding a place for Isaiah to eat. My father lagged behind in the camper, and I couldn’t drive slow enough for him to keep up with me, so we fell into this routine where Isaiah and I would travel ahead, at our comfortable pace, and then we’d pull over at some designated place by the side of the road and wait for my father to catch up. We weren’t traveling with cell phones, so we had to keep to our meeting points, but that still left us plenty of time to go off in search of something suitable for Isaiah to eat.

  McDonald’s turned out to be a safe haven. Yeah, it was no different from Arby’s or some other fast-food chain, but for some reason my guy wasn’t set off by McDonald’s. Isaiah was big into nuggets. That was his thing. And he would only eat them with ranch dressing—and only if the dressing was at precisely the right temperature. If it was too hot or too cold, he’d throw a fit. It had to be just right. When it was too hot, he’d start screaming, “Bubbly ranch! Bubbly ranch!” And if you knew what was good for you, you’d run for cover, because he’d go completely ape shit.

  Sometimes, in some of the more remote parts of Mexico, Isaiah would almost starve, because I couldn’t get him to try anything unfamiliar. I couldn’t find a damn McDonald’s anywhere. We’d pull into some tiny Mexican town, and the only things I could find for him were cookies, or maybe a taco stand where I could get him to keep down some deep-fried pork. He wouldn’t eat any of the healthy stuff my dad kept in the camper and he wouldn’t eat the typical stop-and-go stuff you could easily find by the side of the road, so eating became my front-and-center worry.

  And right alongside this one worry was another: getting him to keep his medicine down. Especially the ones in liquid form. Oh, man, he hated that stuff, and every time I gave it to him he’d puke it right back up. I used to pull over to the side of the road and actually sit on the poor kid to keep him from squirming away and force a dose into his mouth and hope like hell it stayed there. He’d spit it out; it’d get in his hair, all over his clothes. Sometimes, in some spots, we’d be lying, struggling on the ground, so close to the road I’d worry a truck would swing wide and run us over. Or I’d be kneeling on the road, with the hot gravel poking through my knee, wondering how the fuck my life had come to this. How our lives had come to this.

  But there we were … and do you know what? It was actually kind of cool. Even with all the tantrums and the throwing up and the hassle of finding something to eat, I started to look on this time with Isaiah as special. A real father-son-type moment—our first. It’d be supercorny to suggest we bonded or anything like that; really, there was no way to bond with Isaiah at that time in his life. And yet, I was bonding, only what I was bonding with was the idea of being a father. With the idea of a son I knew Isaiah could be, what we could be to each other. Underneath the ordeal of actually caring for Isaiah was a beautiful, simple truth: I was actually caring for Isaiah. I was being a dad.

  Even Doc came around to the same place—or close to it. I can pinpoint the precise moment. We were driving to our designated meeting spot in a small town called Cien. Isaiah and I pulled in by the side of the road and got out of the car just as the sun was going down, and it looked like there were flames licking up to the sky, the whole scene bathed in orange and red. There were no streetlights, no stores, no other cars. Nothing to light the scene but the fading sun. And then, just before dark, my dad drove up in his shit-box all-white camper and crossed to where we were standing, waiting.

  Up until this one moment, my father had never really acknowledged Isaiah. Not just on this one trip but ever, ever, ever. It’s a painful thing to have to admit now, looking back, but at the time it didn’t really register as any kind of big deal—probably because it had taken me so damn long to find my own way to Isaiah. Best I could figure it, my dad had always had a hard time finding room in his heart, in his life, in his head, for folks who fell short of his vision of perfect health and wellness. In his own bizarre way, he saw illness or infirmity as a kind of weakness. He couldn’t accept it, even as it related to his own children or grandchildren. It’s not that my dad was a bad, unfeeling person; it’s just that Isaiah was a hard kid to know; if you didn’t have a handle on his situation or his mood swings it was sometimes easier to look straight past him. That’s all. But here, on a small shoulder of bad road in a tiny Mexican town on the Baja Peninsula, something happened to change all of that. Might have been the beautiful sunset. Might have been the thrill of traveling with three generations of Paskowitz men. Whatever it was, I wasn’t about to question it.

  I reached for my camera and through the viewfinder I could see my father holding Isaiah’s hand. Nothing like that had ever happened before, between those two, and it struck me just then as the most remarkable connection—a sight just as fucking beautiful as the fiery sunset. It almost felt like I was cheapening the moment, to be taking its picture, but it was something to cherish—the first time, really, that my father reached out to my son as a fellow human being, walking this same planet, along this same plane, at this same time. And, on the back of all that, it was the first time, really, that I didn’t hate Isaiah for being who he was, how he was. Or hate myself for how I was with him.

  I used to beat myself up all the time about Isaiah’s autism. I used to think it came from me. I still feel this way, sometimes. Like I’m somehow responsible. But here was this unexpectedly human moment between my father and my son, and it made me want to live for all the other human moments that lay in wait. It made me realize I had to get back home, and get with Danielle, and look at how I’d been as a father. Really look at it.

  And, while I was at it, look at how I’d be, going forward.

  * * *

  Not too long after Isaiah and I got back from Cabo, we were met at the beach by my pal John Shestack, a wacky Hollywood producer who happened to have an autistic son, named Dov. John and I had a whole bunch of friends in common, and we covered a whole bunch of common ground. John kept coming up as someone who might help Danielle and me get a kind of foundation going, maybe find a way to formalize what I was trying to do, surfing with all these autistic kids on the beach. It was just a loose thought at the time. Wasn’t even sure it made sense to do this in any kind of structured way, but I couldn’t shake thinking that whatever light or lift I’d been able to give to these kids and their parents could be shared with hundreds and hundreds of families … if I could just find a way to do it right.

  John and I talked back and forth on this for a while. And I talked to other folks, too. I needed to raise money, raise awareness … and, mostly, raise a posse of world-class surfers willing to donate their time and help me out in the water.

  That afternoon, John came out to San O with his son, just to hang. Dov must have been about five years old, maybe six, and the waves were a little much that day for me to think about going out with Isaiah, or any of the other kids on the beach. The waves looked to be about fifteen feet, about twice the height I was comfortable riding tandem.

  Dov was a spirited kid. He was wearing a pair of Wal-Mart water booties, and trunks. He’d never been out on a board before, but as his dad and I talked back and forth Dov was drawn to the water. The rough surf didn’t seem to bother him, and at some point his father turned to me and said, “What the hell, Izzy. Why don’t you take him out?”

  I looked at John like he was plain crazy. I mean, this was a
sick, sick wave—bigger, even, than I liked to surf all by myself. I said, “You shitting me?”

  John pointed to his kid and said, “Looks like he’s up for it. Let’s just go for it.”

  Well, the little guy was certainly up for it, but he had an excuse; he didn’t know any better—and I guess his dad didn’t, either. Me, I had no such excuse; I certainly knew better, but I grabbed my board and took Dov by the hand and headed for the water. It was a stupid-ass-crazy-screw-loose kind of move, but this was something John seemed to really, really want for his kid.

  In my defense, let me just state for the record that I’m a huge fucking idiot. It’s no defense, really, but most surfers will tell you there’s something dangerously seductive about a big wave; even if you’re scared shitless, you’re drawn to it; even if you should know better, the wave tells you that you don’t. And in John’s defense, he couldn’t really gauge how rough the surf was that day; to him, surfing was surfing; he trusted me.

  Big mistake.

  Before Dov and I even hit the water, one of the lifeguards pulled up in his Jeep, took me aside, and said, “You really want to do this, man?”

  I just shrugged. Didn’t really have a good answer, except “yes and no.”

  Must have stood on the top of the sand leading down to the water for twenty minutes, trying to time the sets. There was a short window for us to paddle out. The waves were breaking so far offshore, a little tide pool had formed in the shorebreak, so we were able to plant ourselves there and then time the lull and scratch for the outside.

  Soon as we set out I started to have second thoughts, and after that some third and fourth thoughts, too. Dov wasn’t even wearing a life vest, I was first realizing, so my damn fool move was becoming more damn foolish by the minute. And that cool, calm, collected demeanor Dov seemed to show on the beach was washed away soon enough. He panicked, once we got out there. Started to scream and kick, but at this point we were committed. Couldn’t really blame him, but to turn back would have been senseless; the best move at this point—the only move, really—was to keep paddling to the outside, and then to hope like hell I could catch a do-able wave and ride it back in.

  Dov was on his belly, facing out. I was on my belly on top of him, trying to pin him to the board so he couldn’t squirm off. As I was paddling, I could see the lines start to form and the waves begin to come at us harder and harder, faster and faster—and so I paddled harder and harder, faster and faster. I tried to get a good momentum going, but on that wave I needed to be like a freight train to power past the break.

  I’d been in this wave before, of course. I knew where and how it would break, but at the same time I had no idea. I was completely confident and completely unsure of myself, both. I could see the waves coming, but they were still swells, which meant they would hit the sandbar below us and pop in such a way they could wipe us out. And so I kept paddling … through the first wave … through the second wave … and then we barely, barely made it through the third. I thought about turtling, flipping us over to give the wave some room to pass, but the break was so massive I didn’t want to lose the board. Instead, I sat up and wrapped my legs tight around Dov and the surfboard, but as I did the full force of the wave broke just in front of us and hit us both right in the face.

  Poor Dov was flipping out. Screaming his little head off. But then, as we passed through the wave and I had a chance to catch my breath and my bearings, I looked down to try to read the kid’s expression. He was just about hugging the board, facedown, and all I could see was the back of his head. We were now all the way outside and bobbing in the water, and we’d gone from chaos to calm, so I started talking to Dov in a soothing voice, told him we were past the worst of it. Told him that here on in we’d have a blast. Told him these things like I really, really meant them.

  Somehow, I got Dov to lift his head and look back at me, so I could get a read on his expression, and as he did I could see blood dripping off his chin. This concerned me, of course. This was not supposed to happen. Then I checked the rest of him, and I saw that his Wal-Mart water booties were gone; the wave had just ripped them right off his feet. This also concerned me, because I knew how attached Isaiah could be over his material possessions; he could fix on a thing and become a total nut job if he lost it or couldn’t use it or had to part with it for some reason.

  Then I leaned over and did a mouth check, saw that the kid hadn’t bitten his lip. Saw that he hadn’t bitten his tongue. So I put my finger inside his mouth and determined the source of the blood; one of Dov’s baby teeth had been knocked all but loose and was now about to come out, so I pushed it gently back and forth until it fell free, and before the tooth could slip into the ocean I tucked it in my mouth against my cheek for safekeeping.

  The whole time, I kept talking to Dov in my most soothing voice. I kept stroking his hair. I kept telling myself that if I presented an aura of calm and confidence, these things would pass through me and attach to him, and just as he seemed to get comfortable the bomb set arrived at our backs and I started to paddle us into it.

  Oh, man, this sucker was huge. The wave itself was about ten to twelve feet, but on its face it seemed to reach to fifteen feet, at least. It was killer. The good news was that the wave was so huge I had plenty of time to pop up, and after that I was able to just pick up Dov and hold him. He wasn’t wearing a vest, so I couldn’t grab him by the collar, the way I’d taken to doing; I had to collect him about the chest, the way you’d hold a puppy. I positioned my feet in a wide, wide stance, tried to make myself as stable as possible on the board, and as I set myself I took off on the left and brought us around so we were looking directly into this massive wall of water—the face of the wave. From there, we must have ridden that thing a half mile or more, until the wave closed up on us, and at that point I laid Dov back down, and I laid myself down just behind, and we rode the rest of the way on our bellies.

  Rode that way right up onto the sand.

  John Shestack came running up to us, all pumped and thrilled and jazzed. He’d been around surfers, but he had no real idea what it was to surf, what it meant to ride a wave like that with a kid like Dov in tow. John was just so charged by what he’d seen, and the look on his kid’s face, which by this point had gone from the sheer terror his father had never seen to the pure adrenaline joy that now washed over him.

  As John raced over to us, he noticed that Dov’s water booties were no longer on his feet. And just then, to John, this seemed like an important detail. He said, “Hey, his booties! What’d you do with his booties?”

  A part of me wanted to turn to John and say, “Fuck his booties, man! Here’s your kid. Safe and in one piece. And happier than he’s ever been!” But I didn’t. I was too energized by our wild ride to cheapen it with any dark thoughts, so instead I made one of the grandest gestures of my surfing career. I rolled from the board and stood to shake John’s hand. Then I reached theatrically into my mouth with my fist and … (wait for it!) … pulled Dov’s tooth from my cheek and handed it to his dad.

  Said, “You might want to hold on to this.”

  Even as I said it, I knew it was an over-the-top, Clint Eastwood–type line—that is, if Clint Eastwood made movies about surfing with autistic kids in treacherous conditions.

  But John was deliriously happy, because his kid was deliriously happy. Because his kid had just lost his first tooth, and ridden his first wave, and seemed to come out of the shell of his autism and brighten … even if it would only last these few moments. Dov was so psyched he wanted to go out again, but I told him it would have to wait for another day. Told him he’d just had the thrill ride to end all thrill rides and we should probably quit while we were ahead.

  And it was in that moment, in handing this little guy’s tooth to his father, after riding one of the wildest waves I’d ever seen at San O, that the idea of Surfers Healing finally and fully came into focus. It’s when the phrase “extreme special ed” first popped into my head—a phrase I’d use ov
er and over, explaining our mission. And it’s when I realized that what Isaiah and I needed was for me to dedicate myself to taking autistic kids out surfing, to making them smile, to making their hearts leap, to making them realize what it felt like to soar.

  Anyway, it’s what I needed.

  * * *

  By the following summer, Danielle and I had kicked things up a notch. We worked it together, decided this was something we should be doing for each other, for Isaiah, for Elah and Eli, for the autistic community in our area.

  On my end, I recruited some of the guys who’d been working as surf camp instructors, off and on. Guys with huge surfing pedigrees—like Puna Moller, Josh Froley, Josh Tracy, Nick Hernandez, and Skippy Slater, Kelly Slater’s brother. (In later years, Kelly would help us out, too.) These guys had been around Isaiah; they weren’t freaked by his behavior, and they had the chops to ride tandem with a little kid, or even a big kid—no easy thing, by the way. Danielle and I set it up so the instructors knew this was a form of mandatory volunteerism. We basically guilted these guys into helping us out, told them it was their ticket to heaven to throw in on such as this. But it wasn’t such a hard sell, after all; soon as they rode their first wave with their first kid they were hooked.

  Our idea was to take advantage of the half-day schedule we ran on Wednesdays and spend the afternoon surfing with dozens of kids at San O. We didn’t advertise what we were doing, just put the word out that we’d be on the beach and available to take these kids on the ride of their little lives; Danielle went about it like it was a grassroots campaign. For example, Cliff Rehrig was always talking about Sonic’s surfing adventures to other parents at Sonic’s school, so we pulled a lot of those folks down for a look. First time out, we started with six or seven families; each of us spent about an hour or two with each kid, and it was just incredible. Exceeded our expectations by, like, a mile. The next week, there were maybe eight or ten families, so each kid got a little less time, but we were able to touch that many more.