Photo credit: Yann Bervas
I was kind of nervous that she was talking to me.
“Do you know when low tide was?”, she asked without losing focus of the greyish-blue horizon, which mirrored her eyes. “I’m not sure, but I think it was around 4pm.” She nodded, “Yeah, I think you’re right.”
The phases of the moon and their tidal swings affect all kinds of marine species. That’s how corals know when it is time to reproduce simultaneously across the reef, how tiny shrimp-like creatures in the plankton know it is time to dive down to avoid hungry fish and how surfers know when to paddle in.
She and I were both floating on a block of foam covered in fiberglass, paddling against the strong rip current taking us too far from where the waves were, courtesy of the full moon. I had noticed her right after I passed the white water and embarrassingly was caught staring. She addressed my indiscretion with a gentle smile and the question about the tide. But how does one not stare at the personification of the most ideal future they want for themselves?
I had so many questions to ask her. “How old are you? How long have you been surfing? How are you so beautiful? What is it like in the future? Am I going to make it?”, but luckily the full moon had not affected my judgement about what is socially appropriate that much. Instead, I found some of the answers by observing my muse attentively. She seemed to be in her mid-to-late sixties and had likely been surfing for at least forty years, given she was riding a mid-length thruster effortlessly. Her beauty came from wrinkles that wrote “a life well-lived” in Braille all over her face and her presence inspired an elegant combination of grace and power. Then, I spent the rest of the session mulling over the couple of questions she couldn’t answer.
As I write this, I imagine the millions of other thirty-year-old’s wondering if they should hold as much hope for their future as their parents dreamed for them. These days we face crises in every system: social, political, economic, environmental. A lot of it stems from the simple fact that there are just too many individuals of Homo sapiens on Earth. Having this thing called consciousness, and even a meditation app to help me to understand it better, I find myself at an ethical crossroads. I’m not fully sure if I want to have kids. I mostly do. But even if the answer is “Baby, yes!”, is it morally right to do it under the current circumstances? Is it fair to my future child to be brought to an overpopulated reality? Is it fair to the other billions of other people’s children to have to share resources with mine?
I looked over at my hero and saw her chatting with a nine-year-old boy in a neon green wetsuit. An approaching set interrupted the conversation, and both started to paddle. “Nana, go! Go!”, he yelled. She paddled fiercely, but the wave faded away ahead of her. “Almost!”, they laughed. Minutes later it was his turn and she was shouting encouraging words at him. The little guy was squeezed between two eager grownups trying to catch a right; he tumbled forward and missed the wave. Nana and I looked at each other and laughed in a maternal way, like the way I think lionesses chuckle while watching their cubs trying to catch a lizard.
I started to think about my grandparents back home. They were my best friends growing up: grandpa let me play with his jaguar pelts and shells from giant Amazon river turtles, grandma got me my first and only dog. So much cooler than parents. I looked at surfing Nana once again and saw everything I aspire to have or be when I’m her age, including being her age one day. Maybe biology explains it. I remember a professor once told us in a class about sexual selection that real reproductive success goes beyond just having lots of offspring - it’s achieved when the offspring has offspring. Evolutionarily speaking, being Nana is the ultimate goal.
It was already dark when I paddled out of the water and back into a reality where some of my concerns about the future are already here. Nana, grandson and I are already living through pandemics and climate crisis. And yet… There we were, in a microhabitat where all that mattered at that specific time and space were tides, waves and whoever was there to share them with us. We laughed as if life was plentiful, eternal and light, because, in that moment, it truly was. “Hey, Future Me, wherever you are, I hope you can find some of that too,” I smiled.
Anyway, I still don’t know if I want to be a mom one day. But I’m sure as hell I want to be a grandma.
-Laís
Photo credit: Holger Link