Our daughter Suzanne wrote the words to the song “Make It Real”, a song that has rescued me more than once as I wrestled a few angels to the ground with my own questions and doubts. I asked her if she would be willing to write a guest blog for this song.
On Florida beaches that we love, we walk by the quiet shoreline and pick up shells deposited there by a gentle gulf tide. But on the North Shore of Oahu in the Pacific, there are no shells, only crabs and thick snails which have the tenacity to ride rough currents and hang onto jagged coral for dear life. The sea here belongs to the few brave souls who respect and willfully challenge its absolute power. The white caps rolling in from Japan have no mercy, have been commanded to carry out their marching orders seemingly without feeling or compassion.
I have never seen waters so resolved, so relentless. I have watched from a safe distance in fear and reverence. Sometimes the winds move in and with them the sudden rains which launch surprise attacks intermittently throughout the day. The sun teases you with its warmth and brilliance, coloring the sea as aquamarine as stained glass; then after you are lured out into the open, the sky perforates and spits sheets of cold, wet rain and before you know what has happened, you are soaked to the skin and shivering in some reef-rimmed corner. You become helpless—these elements will not allow themselves to be controlled. So you sit and wait in the mystery of them.
Maybe that is why I love it there so much. The coral along that beach has never been removed to make the walking easy; no sand has been brought in to smooth the way. The vegetation is riotous; the birds exotic and everything natural is unpredictable.
The surfers understand about living in this “openness.” They understand the importance of gambling on one amazing ride on a wave perfectly curled. They get jobs that can be “optional,” wear clothes that can go anywhere, live in huts close to the breathing, living sea. They eat and sleep solely when the ocean allows them to, and the only supplies they keep on hand are board wax and radios tuned into the local weather station. They take her on knowing full well that she is a volatile lover, that they may lose skin or arms or consciousness in the process of riding. . . or, she may roll them beautifully into heights they cannot imagine, their throbbing hearts caught up in their throats; she may lay them down lovingly sand-smooth as they wonder what undiscovered world they just experienced. “Keeping it real,” they call it. Either way it is her call, her hold on the fragile humanity of them, on all of us.
The North Shore reminds us how vulnerable and mortal we are, how susceptible we are to attack and invasion, to misjudgments—how much we do not know. It is no coincidence that from that point one can see the lookout station where in December of 1941 incoming planes were detected but ignored because our lookouts assumed they were something else, something benign and routine. There are lessons taught in this tumultuous school about submission and risk, about knowing and not knowing, about doubting, about assuming nothing and expecting, well, anything.
--Suzanne Jennings