Riptides and Other Life Adventures

Yesterday my sixteen-year-old daughter Lucia went surfing with her friends. She’s only surfed once before in Mexico and that was when she was ten or eleven years old. She went surfing with her cousin and two friends, all sixteen, to a beach two hours away.

We live in the Pacific Northwest and the water is cold. People die in that water every day. As a mother, especially the mother of a teen, I live in a constant state of low-grade anxiety for what I do not know and what I cannot control. I worry about the big bad world eating up my little girl and spitting her back out. 

At the same time, I want Lucia to have experiences in her life that will make her life richer, more fulfilling. I want her to do things that help her feel engaged and alive. When Lucia told me she was going surfing yesterday I immediately began to worry about her drowning. I didn’t even know one of the kids she was going with. Maybe he was an asshole, one of those kids you read about who is just a bad seed, who always brings trouble. Lucia assured me that this kid was a good kid and a good surfer.

When Lucia and her cousin got home last night they were rosy-cheeked, frizzy-headed, excited, and exhausted. Lucia told me how she’d been hit by a big wave and pulled out into the riptide. She said it was really scary, that she’d tried and tried to swim but felt like she couldn’t get anywhere. Finally, she was able to get back. It wasn’t that long, she said, but it felt like forever.

This is what I had worried about. That the Pacific Ocean would swallow her up and keep her. That her friends would lose sight of her or lack the ability to recover her. That she would die alone and afraid in the freezing cold water. But that didn’t happen. She saved herself. She figured it out. 

At that moment, time stopped. Light swooshed in and around me from all directions — from outside my body, from inside, from above, from below. I was like a time traveler coming back to the present moment. Everything was okay. All of my fears and worries, images of her lost at sea, whirled around me as I looked at my daughter — smiling, healthy, happy, and alive. This was reality. She’d made it. She had figured it out without me.

How many of these moments will my daughter have? Close calls? Almosts? Could have beens? And I will not be with her for most of these moments. The thought of her navigating all of that on her own overwhelms me. How do I prepare her for this life she is living, more and more without me?

When Lucia was little I had the daily satisfaction, a sense of immediate gratification when I helped her cross the street or put on her floaties so she could swim in the lake. I had so much control over keeping her safe. Now all I have are words that I hope she will hear and heed.

We talk about hard things all the time. About drinking and drugs. About dangerous things that might happen at parties. About sex and consent. About birth control. About drowning. But whenever Lucia goes out to a party or to the ocean or in her car, there is a part of me that worries that something will go array. The possibilities for danger in my crazy-mother brain are infinite and (often) irrational.

Yesterday when Lucia saved herself from drowning, I had a moment of clarity. My job is to plant seeds of guidance and wisdom and then nurture the seeds with water and fertilizer. I can share advice with Lucia and engage in regular conversations about risk and choice and discernment. But without sunlight, the seeds will not grow. 

That’s Lucia’s part. Each life experience she lives is sunlight on the seeds. Yesterday at the ocean when she got swept out and felt the fear of danger, that was a life lesson, sunlight on a seed. The time a few weeks ago when she had to call the ambulance for the girl at the party who passed out was sunlight on her seed. Negotiating with her boyfriend about how often she wants to see him is sunlight on her seed. 

I want to believe that with each of these life experiences the seeds are growing into thriving plants that will surround her like a beautiful garden as she moves through life, maybe even growing fruit trees or vegetables. Being the mother of a teenager is gut-wrenching but it helps me to look at it from this angle. These experiences that are scary for me are fruitful for her. Sometimes Lucia will fly too close to the sun, like yesterday in the riptide. I wish I could control that, but I can’t; without sunlight, seeds cease to grow.

In less than two years Lucia will be going to college. She’ll move away from home and have to make decisions mostly on her own. Until she goes I’ll keep planting the seeds, watering and feeding them. And she’ll keep being a teenager, going out and trying new things. And each time she does, I’ll take a deep breath, force a confident smile and say, “Be safe and have a good time. Don’t forget your sunscreen.”