Watching my son lose his new camera recently taught me that as he grows, I need more faith and skills.
Since Covid cancelled his regular sports season, my son has rediscovered surfing and it’s becoming his favorite pastime. He learned on a heavy 10-foot fiberglass board someone had given us years ago but hefting that monster down to the beach has its disadvantages. So on his 15th birthday last week, he was excited to find an 8’ foam Wavestorm leaning against the wall. While these new boards’ extreme buoyancy can make it harder to dive under incoming swells, they’re much easier to catch waves with and are a breeze to carry on land.
The only thing better than riding a wave in the Hawaiian sunset glow is sharing those 10 seconds of magic with your friends on Instagram. So, the icing on his birthday cake was a waterproof GoPro action camera. The small, and pricey, device can be worn on a head strap, capturing the exhilaration from the third eye of the beholder, though many surfers use a mouth grip and others a handheld wand. A budding videographer who's done a lot already with his phone and DSLR camera, my son has been drooling for a real GoPro for some time.
I say real, because a few years back, I was on a trip and got him a “GoPro” from a Shanghai street market. It had been very reasonably priced. When he opened it, we chuckled at the colorful GoPro sticker covering a generic white box. The printed manual was titled “Ultar Action Camera”. The Ultar, as we came to affectionately call it, worked a few times but clearly lacked, as my son said, “quality build”.
So Jeremiah was over the moon to open the second birthday package: a bonafide GoPro Hero7 Black Action Camera with HyperSmooth Stabilization. He spent the rest of the evening unpacking the kit, sorting out the accessories and charging the battery. He called his surfing buddy John and they made immediate plans to get out on the water with it.
The following weekend, he and John met in Waikiki at Duke’s carrying their Wavestorms. It was 5pm and time to get his first surfing footage. I came along to primarily to guard their stuff, especially the camera when he wasn't filming. I had stressed a hundred times how fast someone can walk away with a deserted beach bag and we had argued about whether he could just wrap it in his towel. But I also wanted to watch him enjoy his gifts, which signaled to me his growing mastery and skill as a young man.
They were having a great time. The sets were coming in at 2-3 feet, by Hawaiian scale. It was surprisingly uncrowded. I loved watching my kid make the decision to paddle hard in advance of the swell, take off in its power and then throw himself up into that victorious standing pose, like Neptune astride dolphins. I could make out that he was enjoying himself, filming as he rode. I was proud and smiling.
At one point, I saw them paddling back out toward the break, struggling over some incoming whitewater and my son’s board popped up without him. It floated til he also emerged. Then the two boys were paddling back toward the beach and hauling up their boards. It was only about 6 and there was still plenty of daylight. “Coming in so soon?” I called. They dragged their boards up near my chair. Jeremiah looking a bit disoriented.
“A wave knocked me off my board and put me through the ‘washing machine’. And when I was tumbling, I guess the camera head strap came loose and the camera got washed away. I tried to look for it right then but holding the board and with bare eyes, it was hard. We thought we better come in and get some goggles to search.”
My heart sank like an expensive GoPro with HyperSmooth Stabilization in the Pacific waves. But, optimist that I am, I outwardly kicked into “helpful and hopeful” mom. I joined them asking groups on the beach if anyone had spare goggles or masks. We pieced together tools of one child sized goggles with a strap that needed to be jerry rigged and one decent mask that could be used for the next 20 minutes. The boys duck dived where they reasoned the waves might have dropped their prey. The child goggles ended up being unusable and then the mask owner needed to leave.
Again, mom put her best sandy foot forward and approached suspicious tourists who, after hearing the story readily offered their gear. A svelte, Indian man in a Speedo kindly handed Jeremiah his swim goggles. The light was fading and the waves were smoothing out as the wind died down. I sat in the beach chair and stared at the water, praying silently.
My son stood now about only 20 feet out, where the waves were breaking onto some sandbags. Just standing. His lithe, brown form, previously energized with joy, now limp-shouldered. His faithful friend was still a bit further out diving around. I waved at my boy, urging him to go out a bit further to look again. He dragged his way up through the swirling push and pull and explained, “the goggles are dark so they don’t really work.” He was tired from spinning this way and that, groping about helplessly.
He paused and said,“I’m at a loss.” The tone frightened me for its undoctored awareness, and because it was only half-child.
I did a wordless emotional calculus and then beckoned, “Come in, honey, it’s okay.”
We returned the search equipment. The boys went back out on their boards for a couple more rides before John's dad came to pick him up. I used my phone to video them riding shoreward one last time as the sky turned orange.
John's dad, a longtime surfer, said to me sympathetically, "All I know is that there are a LOT of GoPros out there.” Sigh. The head strap just came off. It was purely unintentional. But the gift had alread been a splurge. It gave me some heartburn to belly up to that bar again. Still by the time we reached the car, with purely instinctual decisiveness, I had decided to buy a replacement and not put any strings or scolding on the deal.
As we drove home I said to him, and to myself as well, “There are going to be a lot of things in life that I can’t help you with that I will wish I could. But this I can do.”
He was a little surprised. “I’m glad I can get a new camera, but I feel really bad that you have to spend money, Mom.” He knows I worry about money. “Yeah, I don’t have to, but I want to because I love you,” I said and tried to leave it at that. Back at the house, I submerged myself in work and at dinnertime, my son carried his affection to me with a plate of chicken nuggets and ketchup.
As I lay in bed that night, I still couldn’t shake my agitation. I shared with my husband, “I’m really upset about that camera.”
“Why? It’s just a camera.”
Because it’s not the camera. It’s the experience of loss that is always out there. The one that I try to outrun 24/7, for myself but even more so for the people I love. I’ve been doing it for decades. Trying to make life bulletproof. And that afternoon, I failed. Obviously, this wasn’t the first time - it happens constantly.
As I witness my kids growing into adults, this race gets scarier and I get slower in it. When Jeremiah voiced in the fading light, “I’m at a loss,” I felt the tremor of adulthood. Of his increasing consciousness and my decreasing ability to shield him.
Once when he was a baby, we went to a marine world for an excursion. Somehow his stuffed bear, his constant companion, fell out of his stroller and no amount of searching produced a trace. He didn’t sleep for 9 days and neither did I. Eventually after posting ads far and wide and hoofing miles of stores, I got a response from another mom that her baby had identical one we could have. Within 2 hours, the surrogate was retrieved. Sitting in his car seat, my 10 month old fingered the bear's nubby ears, breathed peacefully and life resumed.
But this Go-Pro might be the last time I can replace a “thing”. After this comes heavier stuff. My heart tells me I can't survive these losses of innocence. But my mind says they are inevitable and so I simply will. I’d give anything for my children to be spared. Break my bank and go against my better judgement to shield them from insecurity. But a rogue wave can hit anyway right in the middle of the afternoon.
I know I'm also projecting my own dreads. There are so many fronts as you get older. Like, um, death is a real thing. My mother is 96. We’ve been so blessed but the day I’ve dreaded since childhood will come when I can’t save her anymore. Someone Else must.
Then there are marital losses. My husband and I are injured soulmates, having fought like cats and dogs to be one. The damage is rarely neat and the scars itch like hell.
Finally, there are the creative exploits I had planned for life, strapped vulnerably to my head like an expensive camera when adulthood began. Things looked entirely promising, but then there were incidents. Waves. And in the fading light, I’m too tired to grope for where they went down. I look limply at the murky sea and admit to God and myself, “I’m at a loss.”
How can I respond to days like these with some kind of, well, affection? Like my son's chicken nuggets and ketchup. Is that any kind of win? Is this somehow part of growing up? Going pro?
The scriptures say that ‘though I am evil’ I know how to give good gifts to my kids; and how much more will my heavenly Father give good gifts to me. I believe God is and will be good. But what will it look like? How often will he pay outright for a replacement, or find a bear? I want those decisive generosities, a Deus Ex Machina.
But how often will there be no obvious help? How long will I and those I love have to practice brave acceptance and conscious pain? In that wild place of the maturing soul, will we have comfort? The Psalmist penned a prayer for people like me thousands of years ago. We can't skip the night but “Let morning bring word of your unfailing love.”