by Julie Moss
Next to O’Neill’s is a dirt field, “The Dirt Farm.” Jack was kind enough to let the community use the property to run local surf contests like the Log Jam. It was old school, all the way: you couldn’t compete with a board built after 1970. You couldn’t use a board leash either. If a wave separated you and your board, you swam to shore. The contest brought out Santa Cruz’s big-wave titans, including Peter Mel, Jay Moriarity, Chris Gallagher, Robert “Wingnut” Weaver (later to star in The Endless Summer II), Marcel Soros, Darryl “Flea” Virostko, Richard Schmidt, and tough, cold-water goddesses like Candy Woodward, Anne Useldinger, Brenda Scott Rogers, and Shannon Aikman. Brenda, whose father invented Doc’s Pro Plugs to protect surfers’ ears from cold water, and Shannon were once part of the California Golden Girls, an elite surf team. Think of these wave-riding goddesses as Bad Girls on Boards.
Out of the water, our ships continued drifting further apart. Mark and I decided to attend couples counseling, but after six sessions, felt no closer to finding common ground. I took that to mean one thing: When can we move back to Cardiff? I gave that thought plenty of flight. I really wanted to go home.
My days revolved more and more around Mats’s schedule. After school, we’d find an after-school adventure, or dine together, particularly at Star Bene, where he liked the gnocchi. He’d order the gorgonzola gnocchi and ask for no gorgonzola. I’ve always been a frugal woman; to save $12, I could learn to make gnocchi at home. I made them for us at least once a week, and later taught Mats how to make them too.
After Mats finished kindergarten in the Summer of 2000, we traveled to Cardiff as a family for our summer break. Something else excited me: triathlon was making its Olympic debut in Sydney! The race turned out to be a nail-biter, with Switzerland’s Brigitte McMahon, American Michelle Jones, and Switzerland’s Magali Messmer finishing their 1,500-meter swim, 40K bike, and 10K run splits in almost exactly the same time. McMahon won by two seconds over Michelle Jones, with Messmer just twenty-eight seconds behind.
As I looked at the results, I saw the complete changing of the guard in women’s triathlon. Paula Newby-Fraser, Erin Baker, Wendy Ingraham, the Puntous twins, Colleen Cannon, and I were nowhere to be found. An entirely new crowd ruled the sport now, and if this Olympic Games was any indication, we were in for a fantastic new decade.
A few months later, Mark and I observed our eleventh anniversary without a dinner reservation, gifts, or “Happy Anniversary” greetings. Our anniversary tradition of dressing up like bride and groom was also long gone. Nor were any boxes filled with rings or watches. The only boxes sat in our garage, stuffed with our belongings. We still hadn’t fully unpacked. This proved to be sadly convenient, as Mark would be moving out soon. Through all of this, Wendy Ingraham popped back into my life as a huge support. Wendy lived in nearby Walnut Creek, and really came through. The vibe and mood was quite different than when she’d shown up at my wedding in the hottest dress, but one thing was clear—she was a real friend, big-time.
Years later, we did a NPR radio lab program together on triathlons. I flew out to Wendy’s new Colorado home to see her and her husband, Vern Smith, and her daughter, Skylar. On the drive from the airport, she mentioned she had to make a quick detour to do a radio interview for National Public Radio.
“Is it for something called Radio Lab?” I asked with a pit in my stomach.
“Yeah, how’d you know?” she replied, curious. “It won’t take long.”
I suddenly remembered the Radio Lab interview request from weeks earlier. When I put it all together on our drive, that I’d not responded and they’d turned to Wendy, I was horrified. WTF. NPR is huge. “Wing, I think I was supposed to do this interview, and I completely blew them off.” I was still so distracted by what was going on at home. “Can you let them know I’m here with you in case they still want me to join in?”
Years later, while in Junior Lifeguards in Santa Cruz, Mats listened as the instructor put on an inspirational podcast . . . the Radio Lab show. After several minutes, Mats said, “That’s my mom.” His instructor couldn’t believe it. When I picked up Mats, his instructor looked a little more awestruck by me than when I’d dropped him off.
As Mats settled into second grade, and we all dealt with the 9/11 terrorist attack, I settled into more loneliness and despair. The only person I wanted to call after the attacks was Mark, but I couldn’t risk hearing the flat, detached tone in his voice. I continued to seek solace in the community of triathletes, but I didn’t need tea leaves or couples counseling to see our next step.
Time to make our separation official. Months after Mark moved out, we began mediation. Once we turned off the emotions and focused on the task at hand, we were very efficient and clear about our intentions. Mediation began and ended with no fuss, no muss, nothing too emotional. We simply split everything down the middle, including custody of Mats.
“She was far more emotional and distraught after she and Reed broke up than when she and Mark divorced,” Lisette recalled. “I was surprised. I kind of kept waiting for the big emotional fallout. During this time, in late 2002, her mom also died. Same reaction as when she and Mark split up: Julie didn’t want to go there emotionally. I didn’t see her cry for the longest time. We can only do that for so long.”
All the tears had been shed and the lines drawn. The lack of emotion I showed was a combination of shock and denial that the love of my life was no longer my husband, and I would be making a life on my own in Santa Cruz to co-parent Mats.
My first consideration was returning to Cardiff, but I could never take Mats away from Mark. I couldn’t imagine recreating the childhood and adolescence Marshall and I had, raised entirely by our mother, her bitterness a constant, our father nowhere to be found. Mark is one of the greatest fathers I have ever known. I couldn’t imagine being readily employable and self-supporting, either, while also tending to Mats during this disruptive time. Cardiff was out.
Mark remained nearby. He purchased a house almost directly behind my house and two blocks over. If Mark walked the block and half from his house to check the surf, and I walked from my house to check it out, we never saw each other, because of the way Pleasure Point is situated. He went to the shortboard spots known as Sewers and Little Windansea to check the waves, while I scanned the peeling longboard surf at the Point.
Our avoidance of contact became the rule, rather than the exception. However, Mats navigated freely between our homes.
With Mark gone, I had choices, none of them awesome. I couldn’t continue to lash out, sabotage, or vent against him, because he was Mats’s dad and I did not want Mats to see or feel my anger. I couldn’t beg, plead, and demean myself, or compromise my dignity while trying to impose my will. I desperately wanted him to see my side of things, but that ship had sailed. Our mutual anger eroded any compassion we felt for each other.
I fell into a place where so many women tumble after a long relationship or marriage breaks down. I imagined Mark moving toward his ideal vision for his life, free of the constraints of a disapproving wife. I pictured him fully empowered, his world filled with new options, his adrenaline pumping, mastering life in the same way he mastered the Ironman.
I felt the exact opposite. And my perceptions of Mark’s life, right or wrong as they were, caused me even more pain.
After a summer visit to Cardiff, Mats moved into a tiny charter school for third grade—away from his Gateway friends. However, his teacher, Mrs. Sanders, softened the landing. She remained his single favorite educator throughout his school years. Tall and robust, she greeted the kids with welcoming smile and hugs. She played tetherball with Mats on a regular basis and generally made him feel special during a tough time in his life. Mats needed a friend and Mrs. Sanders stepped up to the plate.
Meanwhile, I decided that life as a sidelined maiden was no life for me. I started dating an up-and-coming triathlete that Mark was coaching. My new friend needed to make a choice: Me? Or his coach? He found a new coach. We both had unfi
nished business, as he was married but separated, and I was waiting for my divorce to become final. I found myself the experienced older woman who knew how to spot and hone an athletic diamond in the rough. I could do that in my sleep. It felt good to be seen as special, and even though I sensed the limitations of this relationship, I enjoyed the sweet simplicity and sense of renewal it gave me.
During our time together, though, my friend introduced me to the last thing I would ever imagine doing. He had modeled overseas, and picked up smoking. I never smoked, because I couldn’t stand the smell of tobacco, but I always liked the scent of clove cigarettes. One evening, we saw clove cigarettes in the store and bought a pack on a whim. I smoked one—and liked it. Then I smoked another. And another . . .
We stopped dating after a year, but I kept a new secret habit.
Two days before Thanksgiving, my mother died. No one was around to help me deal with this crushing moment. Mark and Mats were at a Dance of the Deer retreat in Waipio Valley, Hawaii, and Sue was also traveling with her daughters in Hawaii. Lisette was in Houston, leaving only Leslie Engel, Mats’s Auntie Lala, to sit with me in Cardiff while I waited for the coroner to arrive.
One of the only silver linings of moving to Santa Cruz was that I could be away from my mom and her ever-increasing drinking. I wasn’t ready to admit she had become a full-blown alcoholic, but I didn’t even trust her driving Mats to the nearby Cardiff library a couple times a week. She and John, her late husband, were partners in smoking and drinking, and she started earlier and earlier in the day. Often, I could hear the ice cubes clinking in her glass when I called in the late morning.
We started visiting with Mom for shorter and shorter periods. It became hard for me to be around her and see her deteriorate.
Before Thanksgiving, I decided to visit. Marshall had taken an assignment in La Quinta to work at one of the restaurants owned by his employer, TS Restaurants. He had become my mom’s caretaker and seen her through her decline. He told me, “Julie, you need to come home.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s getting bad.”
“How bad?”
“I’m leaving, and I need you to come down and get a sense of the situation.”
I headed home on a Saturday, but stopped for a night in Santa Barbara. I really resisted going home, worried about what I’d see. I knew I had to show up by the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, when Marshall would be gone. So I pushed Saturday into Sunday, into Monday . . . into Tuesday. On the way down, I stopped at Oakley Eyewear to pick up some new gear.
I finally showed up at 4:00 P.M. on Tuesday; Marshall had left a couple hours before. The house felt dark. I went upstairs, and my mom was napping. I gave her a hug and kiss. “Mom, I’m here.”
She stirred slightly. “I’m just going to sleep for awhile longer,” she said.
“Great.” I got on the computer to do some work for Aqua Sphere, where I served as a sales and demonstration rep for triathlon clubs and workout groups in the Bay Area.
Later, I turned on the lights downstairs. My mom came down and made herself a vodka on the rocks. She was going to smoke a cigarette. “Mom, would you please go outside to smoke?” I asked, unaware that she probably wasn’t physically capable of getting herself out there.
She opted not to smoke.
We talked briefly. I don’t know if it was her feeling uncomfortable, or not being able to smoke, but she headed back upstairs. She was unsteady on her feet; she’d really deteriorated physically. I now saw what my brother had been telling me. She looked ten years older. I didn’t want to call attention to her unsteadiness, but after Thanksgiving, I was coming in hard to check her into a detox facility. Give her these next couple days, be kind, don’t nag or make comments . . . you’re gonna save her.
I researched facilities online for a little over an hour. As I went upstairs, I peeked in on her. I didn’t see her in the bed. Was she so messed up she went to the wrong bedroom? I checked every room. Nothing.
A moment later, I found her, halfway between the bathroom and bed. The way she was laying was awkward. I knelt down to see if she was breathing. She was so cold. I think I knew she had died, but wasn’t one hundred percent sure.
I got a message to Marshall; he called me right back. “I think I need to call the fire department, get the ball rolling,” I said.
“Yeah, do that. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
I called the fire department, and they came with lights blazing. I recognized a couple firefighters from our years in Cardiff. They raced inside, ready to save a life. They turned Mom over and set up the defibrillator, then shocked her once. They asked for her details. I made sure to tell them, “She’s a chronic smoker and a chronic alcoholic.” Plus, Marshall had told me she hadn’t eaten in more than a week; I relayed that information.
A look passed from one firefighter to the other. They eased back, slowing things down, taking their feet off the gas pedal. I watched the monitor. I could see it jump to life; were they bringing her back? I said a silent prayer to basically implore my mother to let go if that’s what she really wanted. The spike in the monitor turned out to be a shock from the defibrillator.
I went downstairs, where Lala waited. When I saw her, something occurred to me: “I didn’t give my mom a kiss goodnight.”
“You still can,” she said softly.
We walked upstairs and I knelt down. Mom looked so vulnerable on the ground, so I tucked a wool throw around her. I kissed her cheek and whispered, “I’m here.” I lay down next to her, closed my eyes and imagined cheering for her as she crossed her own finish line.
Looking back on the latter years of my mother’s life, she drank when she was happy, and drank when she wasn’t. The drinking masked her depression. She’d escalated since retiring at fifty-five after a productive career in education, even though she’d remarried and moved to Sedona. She came back to Cardiff after John died. Her father, my grandfather Henry Tubach, had a long battle with depression, but lived to be ninety-eight and walked me down the aisle. Unfortunately, alcoholism runs in both sides of my family. It had just taken away my mother, and my brother battled it too.
I grew to see my mom and her life through two different prisms. Through my divorce, I came to appreciate how she single-handedly raised her two kids and earned her master’s degree. She made so many sacrifices of which I wasn’t aware, and did it on her own. Now she was gone—just when I needed her most.
While mourning my divorce and my mom’s death, I reached again to my beloved triathlon community. Was I running forward into healing, training, and competition? Or running away from my life? Probably both. I headed to the 2003 New Zealand Ironman, where I learned I still had gas in the tank. Still, I was so emotionally wrecked, I finished in 11 hours, 11 minutes, not quite the 10:00:19 of a few years before, but enough to place third in the 40–44 age group. It felt validating to stand on a podium again!
Something else happened in New Zealand—an Australian lawyer walked into my life. He owned a coffee farm in Byron Bay and lived in Sydney. He had me at the mention of Byron Bay, one of the world’s best surf spots. We flirted with a long romance until February 14, 2004, an awkward day to end any relationship.
My ongoing anger toward Mark shifted to a constant, underlying sad hum inside. Anger energized me into action, but this new, ever-present sadness idled and froze me. A perfect example was teaching. I held a lingering desire to get my teaching credential, but now felt emotionally paralyzed. It was too late to change, I reasoned, and I felt too far removed from academic learning to return to school. In telling myself this lie, I reinforced my depressing paralysis. I believed I was a victim and helpless to change my situation. This non-decision still haunts me.
I still had Mats on which to focus my love, but it was time to again become the girl who could change sport by showing the world her will and determination.
It would take a lot longer than I imagined.
CHAPTER 17
Surfing T
sunamis: Raising Mats
Sometimes, a parent sends her or his kid into a new experience and watches how things go with varying degrees of excitement, joy . . . and maybe concern. On an early March morning, as I arrived at Pleasure Point during a wake-up walk, I thought Mats needed to try something that doesn’t happen often:
Riding a tsunami. Freshly brewed by a mighty Pacific earthquake.
I’d listened to the weather and news reports, looked more closely at maps and forecasts on the computer, and didn’t see anything too dangerous materializing. As I stood on the cliff, two local guys talked about a tsunami that once hit while they were in the water, and how wild it was to feel the hard pull of the ocean. Pure stoke lit up their eyes. That look revealed a thrill to beat all thrills. I want Mats to feel that.
I ran home and woke him up. “Mats! Put your wetsuit on. I think you should paddle out!”
“What?” he replied, full of thick teenage grogginess.
“I’m not going to go out, because I need to keep my eye on you.”