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"...when I surf I could just sit there, and I know I'm black, and I can tell by some of the stares, people are going, 'Oh, look, a black woman.' But I can just sit there and shut down for a bit. That's nice."
~ Surf Sista Mary
Show Notes and Further Reading
Mary’s Blog: Black People Don’t Surf
Derrick Adams’ Water Paintings
NY TIMES Article about racism and American pools.
Trailer for documentary The Black Line.
Trailer for documentary White Wash about African American surfers
Interview Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Surf Sista Mary: What you don’t understand about being black or being gay or being, you know, Latino or Muslim is you’re always reminded of it. So if you’re white, you can just go through life and be white. But if you’re a different group something is always reminding you. The president says something or there’s something on the news or somebody goes to a mosque and shoots up the place. All those things remind you, oh you’re not like everybody else, even though you are. But when I surf I could just sit there, and I know I’m black, and I can tell by some of the stares, people are going, “Oh, look, a black woman.” But I can just sit there and shut down for a bit. That’s nice.
Maia: In a 1970 interview with the late great Nina Simone, the interviewer asks what freedom is. Simone says, “I’ll tell you what freedom is to me, no fear… like a new way of seeing…”
This interview was recorded in the summer of 2019. A lot has changed since my shared sessions with Surf Sista Mary. The day I am recording this introduction is June 19th, 2020. That was unintentional but welcome coincidence. For anyone who doesn’t know its Juneteenth— a holiday that commemorates the day in 1865 when a Union general announced to the African Americans of Galveston Texas that they were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Lincoln had signed two and a half years earlier. Word spread quickly among Texas’s black population and previously enslaved people released themselves into the promise of freedom. In so many ways that promise was and still is that promise was delayed, and then just outright betrayed, through a combination of many legal and policy decisions, outright terror and violence, and all kinds of cultural currents and habits.
It feels to me like, in just the last couple of weeks, something 7changed. It has begun to feel like there is hope. Like there is reason to believe that the promise of an America of the people, by the people, and for the people might have some life left in it yet. That liberty and justice for all could be, after 400 years, a thing we on this land between two seas move towards together.
In other words, it’s started to feel like we white people are waking up to a world, and to a possibility that has been right here all along.
This episode was initially scheduled to come out in early March of 2020, but I decided to delay this season’s podcast. It didn’t quite seem right to be talking about all of the benefits of surfing at the beginning of a global pandemic that would clearly reduce everyone’s freedom of movement, including access to beaches and the joy they bring to those of us who surf. And then came, Amauhd Arbery, murdered while he was jogging, Breonna Taylor, murdered while she was sleeping, and George Floyd, murdered while he was pleading for air. The Black Lives Matter movement has garnered the attention it deserved all along and we are in a time of what feels like long-overdue national reckoning.
None of this, not pandemics, not police brutality, came up when Surf Sista Mary and I shared some fabulous waves in Southern California. We were, as far as I know, thinking about what surfers think about— waves and rides, rides, and waves. But while thinking of riding the ocean’s energy we knew the feeling we were chasing, and although there’s no good word for it, perhaps one that comes close is freedom.
Unlike early March, this seems like the perfect time to release Mary Mills’ voice into the world. What does surfing have to do with black liberation?
Simone’s eloquence and evocation come close to describing my experience as a surfer. Learning how to ride the waves has been the most liberating, empowering, and transformative practice of my life. Anybody who’s paying attention can’t ignore the fact that African-Americans are massively under-represented in almost all Surf lineups in this country. The history of modern surfing is inextricably intertwined with the history of colonial exploitation, of the subjugation of native people, of the systematic removal of African Americans from recreational access to the water over a period of generations. In other words, when Sista Mary sees surprise in the eyes of those who note that “there’s a black woman”, it’s no surprise that it’s a surprise. So few of my fellow surfers perceive that fact as a problem.
I have long believed that I understand why some of the most violent white and police instigated riots against African Americans during the civil rights movement happened during peaceful attempts to integrate beaches. If you want to keep people from loving one another, from coming to feel deeply tied to one another, from understanding how little separates us and the powerful, intense connections that come through shared, immersive joy, you’d better keep them from playing together in the water.
For my part, I haven’t pushed the issue as much as I could have and, let’s face it, should have. Surfing is the most liberating, instructive, deeply freeing practice I’ve ever experienced. As I’ve said many times in these interviews, it can dissolves artificial barriers in our minds, our bodies, our hearts, our lives. I didn’t learn to surf until I was 40. Breonna Taylor died when she was 26. It should go without saying but saying is necessary and not nearly enough. Everybody, no matter how much melanin, should be free to live and breathe and learn to surf if she chooses.
It seems so straightforward. But that freedom might require a radical restructuring of lots of unseen forces and assumptions and habits that have allowed me, and others like me, to throw ourselves headlong into this deeply rewarding and creative endeavor without much thought for who’s missing from the line-up. There’s a contemporary African American painter named Derrick Adams who painted a series of black bodies at play in the water. He notes that it is precisely when black bodies are shown or seen at leisure that white supremacy is most likely to rear its ugliest Hydra heads. Adams believes that the black body, freely engaged in leisure, at play in the water after and in spite of all the collective historical trauma, is a profoundly political, deeply radical portrayal.
In a 1976 live concert recording, Nina Simone sings
I wish I could share all the love that’s in my heart
Wish I could break all the things that bind us apart
Wish you could know what it means to be me
Then you’d see
You’d agree
Everybody should be free
Because if we ain’t then we’re murderous
Welcome to Waves to Wisdom.
Interview
Maia: Okay, ready?
Mary: Ready.
Maia: Awesome! OK, why don’t we start, if you are comfortable with you telling everybody your name, your age, and how long you been surfing.
Mary: I will tell you my surfing name, Surf Sista Mary. I am 56— I just turned 56 last week and I’ve been surfing 17 years.
Maia: Fantastic, okay. And we are parked on the side of a winding road in San Clemente and we can see the Pacific from where we are, the sun is out [gorgeous!] so gorgeous and will you tell anybody who’s listening a little bit about what we just did.
Mary: We just had a really good session at San Onofre. I didn’t think it would be good I was thinking I don’t know if I want to go is supposed to be windy and then it was gray when we got here, it was raining on the way but the waves were pretty darn good [laugh].
Maia: Holy cow it was so fun! You know I’m used to East Coast breaks and we just don’t have waves that go on and on like that. It was, there were such long rides.
Mary: That’s the best surf I’ve had in months.
Maia: And you know one of the things that’s such a treat for me is seeing people like the woman we saw who must’ve been in her late 60s who was just rippin’!
Mary: Which one? The one with the white hair or…
Maia: The one with the white hair I’m thinking but there were a couple out there, weren’t there?
Mary: Yes!
Maia: Fantastic, well you live in Los Angeles [yes] and this was our second session this morning we’d surfed earlier right at one of your usual breaks, El Porto, and I found you because of a blog that you wrote for several years. Your blog is entitled “Black People Don’t Surf” …
Mary: That’s the final name, the name alternated [okay] depending on my mood.
Maia: Fantastic talk a little bit about your moods and your rotating blog names.
Mary: Well, I like William Faulkner so originally it was The Surf and The Fury and then I got bored with that and I think I changed it to a different Faulkner title. I think he had a book called Light in August and I change that to Surf in August. But always people remark about me being black and surfing and, you know, the stereotype is black people don’t surf. So finally at one point I just changed it to that and left it.
Maia: It, uh, it speaks quite eloquently just, just like it is I think [laugh] and you really, eye-opening and you really you chronicled your, your surfing adventures for several years and almost session by session. What was the motivation to start a blog that you kept up for that long?
Mary: Well, I like to write. At the time I remember blogs were just starting and they were featuring them on Surfline and I thought I want to be featured on Surfline so I started a blog. And they did feature it on Surfline. That was part of why I did it because I wanted to be noticed for my writing and I also have such a bad memory that I wanted to be able to look back and see what I did when I was surfing and learning to surf. And when I look at the blog now I think, “I don’t remember that, at all.”
Maia: It’s good that you kept track that way. And something that you talked about earlier today which I find so fascinating is that moment when you first decided to learn to surf and the fact that it coincided with another really important event in your life. Will you tell that story?
Mary: Yeah, [laugh] now I’m laughing. Okay, I used to be a competitive cyclist so part of my route depending on where I was training would be to just ride slowly down the bike path and enjoy the ocean. And one day I passed a table that had a brochure for a women’s surf class and I thought “Huh, I’ve always like surfing I want to learn to surf and I finally know how to swim.” So I stopped and got the brochure but a little voice told me, “You can’t call them. Not yet.” And I took the brochure home and was going to call them the voice could tell me “You, you can’t —you can’t surf yet.” and it turns out I was pregnant.
Maia: Fascinating!
Mary: Yeah so I had to wait until I had the kid in the three months after I had him I started taking classes.
Maia: So let’s just let me just pause for second so you had a three-month-old you had just given birth to your one and I believe only child [correct, one and only] to your son and then you started to, to surf. And was that class a good class? Did you feel like you became proficient as a result of that?
Mary: No, not at all the class was good. I did not become proficient.
Maia: It takes a while, doesn’t it?
Mary: Yeah I think it was mainly to get women in the water it was run by Mary Setterholme and she was a former US surfing champ and I think she was just trying to get women in the water but was not proficient. I was good at popping up— they told me that.
Maia: And did you fall in love with it right away?
Mary: I think I fell in love with it when I was a kid? [You did?] Yeah, I wanted to surf since I was little.
Maia: And talk a little bit about that, where you first see surfing?
Mary: ABC’s Wide World of Sports! I think it was was it in black and white? No I think it was probably in color by that point but I remember having a crush on Shaun Thompson from South Africa.
Maia: He’s a cutie!
Mary: Oh my God. And I met him and he kissed me on the mouth and I almost died.
Maia: Did he really? Wow!
Mary: Yes, he did! But ever since then I kept thinking I want to surf but I’m a black kid with straightened hair and I don’t know how to swim. So I didn’t think it would ever happen. But then I grew up, cut off all my hair, learned how to swim and it was time to learn how to surf.
Maia: It happened.
Mary: Yeah.
Maia: So you saw surfing on Wide World of Sports. Were you tempted to learn then?
Mary: No! I couldn’t swim! And black people surfing? That’s not a thing! I mean I was little— probably like 10. Maybe, so, mm-mh.
Maia: So you saw surfing as a child you really wanted to surf as an adult he finally just happened upon this opportunity yes at that point you had learned how to swim
Mary: Yes at 23 I decided, Okay I need to learn how to swim because I wanted to do triathlons. So I chopped off all my straightened hair. I was never into hair and into all the trappings of what make you stereotypically attractive as a woman.
I’ve always been athletic and obviously I have always been black and black women are acculturated to straighten our hair and then you’re a slave to your hair because you don’t want to get it wet you don’t want to do this. And now women wear weaves but I always just wanted to go outside and play so 23 because I wanted to learn how to swim I chopped off all that straightened hair I just had a short Afro and it’s been on ever since. I have never straightened my hair again and never will.
Maia: You don’t miss it?
Mary: Oh, no! Why would I? I can go do whatever— I don’t even look in the mirror barely. Because I don’t wear makeup and I don’t do anything with my hair. I just get up, shake my dreadlocks and I go.
Maia: And you’re ready…
Mary: Yeah, and my man loves it so what’s the problem?
Maia: Well, it’s pretty fabulous the dreadlocks are pretty fabulous, I have to say…
Mary: And he said that he likes that I don’t wear makeup because of course then you spend all your time going, wait, I have to get ready. If he wants to go do something I’m ready.
Maia: You just go do something…
Mary: Yeah, [more freedom…] if it rains, it rains! just did is we just go more freedom if it rains, it rains.
Maia: Part of, part of what I’m doing with this podcast is trying to share what I believe I’ve come across which is this wisdom that surfers seem to me to accumulate from their embodied practice of immersing themselves in this more than human medium, in this dynamic environment. What did surfing teach you as you were learning? Mary: As I was learning? I think it taught me some humility. I’ve never been stuck up but I’ve always been a very good athlete so whatever sport I turned to I was good and boy surfing was different. So it teaches you patience. It teaches you humility and it teaches you you’re not in control, the ocean is in control. You can only control you, you can’t control that— I’m pointing at the ocean. You can’t control that. So at some point you have to give yourself over to it and you have to know when you can get in and you also have to know when you can’t and I think a lot of people don’t learn that. If the oceans angry you need to keep your little happy— do we swear? [we can we can beep it] you need to keep your little happy butt on land.
Maia: Yeah, yeah, it’s, it really is— and I don’t know if this is true for you but I tend to be a pretty anxious and controlling person at times and so that as you say giving yourself over to this powerful force, that for me, I have to practice that over and over and over again. It’s never something that I feel, I, I’ve got this now. I’m done. I need reminders all the time and surfing is so good at giving those reminders.
Mary: I don’t have that though and I think it may be because I’m black. I— there’s so little I can control— I can’t make people treat me equally and most people are nice to me so I’m not saying, “Oh I get treated badly because I’m black.” I get treated very well because I’m me. That’s what I’m told because people say you have a good attitude you have good energy. So people are always nice to me but as a black person and as a black woman I feel like I don’t control much of anything. So surfing is just part of me going alright, I can work within the structure I have but I try to control very few things.
There are so many forces at play when you walk out of your door. How can you control any of it? You know, people try to use their money to control it but that’s a good thing about surfing and I’ve said that elsewhere, the ocean doesn’t care you can have all the money in the world you can have all the privilege in the world, you can have all the beauty in the world, if you don’t know how to surf and respect the ocean, you’re not going to do well.
Maia: It doesn’t make any difference does it?
Mary: It doesn’t make a difference.
Maia: No, not one bit— and it is, I don’t know and, in my experience, you know I walk through the world occupying this body and it’s probably different from your experience— I have found that at many breaks once people figure out that you are competent, they treat with a certain measure of respect [they do]. Yeah, and it’s it’s [agreed] interesting because there are— we were discussing last few days I’ve surfed at Malibu and there’s about to be this huge contest there which means there are world-class long borders there, most of whom look like they’re between 20 and 30 and, you know they’re all of course, beautiful and, and showing off for each other, as is their job, that’s what they do, they are pro surfers and for the most part they, they ignore me but they’re also, really when it came to a point where I was in a position where I couldn’t be ignored I was treated with respect every single time and that doesn’t always happen out in the world.
Mary: Right, exactly, it doesn’t always happen at Malibu, so I’m [so I’ve heard] yeah yes so I was shocked!
Maia: I think the pros didn’t have anything to prove to me, that’s for sure.
Mary: One of the aspects of your outlook on life that has really been intriguing to me as we’ve had conversations over the last couple of surf sessions is your orientation towards work and I’ve said elsewhere in the podcast that I spent a lot of time in this little village in Costa Rica. And so I I’ve been lucky enough to befriend to be befriended by several Costa Ricans. And your attitude towards work comes closer to their attitude towards working than just about any American I have come across. [really?] Yes, of our age. Would you talk a little bit about your relationship with work?
Mary: American culture says if you don’t work you’re lazy. Well I have 3 degrees and I’ve had jobs. But sitting in an office typing in front of a computer— for what? I mean really for what? To make money and then to make money for what and for whom?
Maia: That’s a good question.
Mary: You know I’m the job I have now, I don’t get paid much— my boss makes tons of money so really I’m helping him. I mean, I’m paying my bills but it’s really— my attitude is you’re getting the best hours of my day to help you make money and really I’m not getting that much out of it. So I don’t I don’t understand why work is that important. We should be living. I mean yes we live in the United States, we have bills, we want housing so you have to work but you don’t have to have a career. I’ve never had a career. My kiddos my career.
Maia: And what a meaningful career that is!
Mary: Yeah, it’s the best job ever!
Maia: And what are your 3 degrees in, if you don’t mind me asking?
Mary: A BA in English, and an MA in English, and a law degree. And I hate work, that’s what’s so funny but I didn’t know it at the time when I was getting all the degrees. I thought I was setting myself up for a career and then I got in the working world and hated it from day one.
Maia: My Costa Rican friends who I know who, for example, are surf instructors they don’t hate their work at all but they do it in order to support the important parts of their lives where are their children, and their families, their parents— they live close to their parents as do you, you make that choice and there are other people of course you have grimmer jobs who have different attitudes towards them, and we have, you know, there are precious few jobs I think that don’t keep people like you and me hemmed in physically to a point where we’re just miserable [right] especially if you’re a thinking sort of person you get channeled into these jobs that involve sitting in a desk…
Mary: Yes it’s awful— luckily I have a standing desk now and I work in front of a window but if I didn’t have those two I would’ve quit. I’ve been there a year– that’s almost a record for me.
Maia: And you’re writing professionally now, right?
Mary: I guess, is it writing I don’t know, what I do, they call us technical writers [OK] yes so who cares? I mean, really when I meet people I don’t say to them, “What do you do for living?” [right] I don’t care what you do for living [yeah]. It’s not important, so it irks me when people say “And what is your job?” Are you gonna judge me based on my job? Who cares what I do! I go to job to make money to keep food in my kid’s mouth and, you know, pay the electric bill and all that but other than that and it doesn’t define me!
Maia: Yeah, yeah if you were going to answer that question in a way that that felt right to you, what do you do? What would be the first few answers you would give?
Mary: I always tell people, well before I have this job “I’m a mom.” [Absolutely] Yeah, now I say, I okay work for this company and write technical manuals for airline compliance, who cares? And then I always say, “Who cares?” (23:38)
Maia: Who cares— do you ever say you’re a surfer when people ask what you do?
Mary: No, in terms of a job, no.
Maia: It’s interesting because one thing I’ve noticed about surfers, American surfers is that if you asked them what they do many of them will answer with their job. But if you pay any attention to their lives that’s number 2. Unless they have a family, in which case maybe it’s number three. What they do first is sometimes family, sometimes what they do is surf. The job happens, it’s not like we’re not responsible but if that surf forecast is good enough, that job’s gonna wait.
Mary: Right?!? [yeah] That’s why working part-time now because I have an 88-year-old mom, I’m the only child. I have a 17-year-old kid, I’m a single parent, and I work full time I was not surfing, there was no time for surf. I finally decided I can’t do this. I need me time. So now I’m starting to surf again. I don’t have benefits anymore— I don’t care. I should care but my health is basically good so I don’t care and I’m going to get married in a year— I hate to— but you have to think that way I’m an American— I’m gonna get married in the year that I’ll have my husband’s insurance so I can hang on.
Maia: Yes, yes well and it’s interesting, insurance does not keep you healthy.
Mary: No, not at all.
Maia: But having a reasonable lifestyle— that can maybe keep you healthy [yeah]. So what other lessons has the ocean or surfing taught you?
Mary: That’s a good question. I don’t know it’s kind of what you were talking about— how people don’t judge you as much— if you could surf, you’re cool. So I’ve never had any kind of run-in with anyone based on characteristics that I can’t change. So nobody’s ever said, “You stupid woman” or “You stupid black person.” No, I can surf and people are, “Hey how are you?” That’s nice, that’s very nice.
Maia: Is that different from the rest of your life?
Mary: I think with surfing I can turn off my brain and that’s why I like it. That’s different from the rest of my life. One thing I tell people is, “What you don’t understand about being black, or being gay, or being you know Latino, or Muslim is you’re always reminded of it. So if you’re white you can just go through life and be white. But if you’re a different group something is always reminding you— the president said something or there’s something on the news or somebody goes to a Mosque and shoots up the place. All those things remind you you’re not like everybody else even though you are. But when I surf I can just sit there and I know I’m black and I can tell by some of the stares people are going “Oh, look a black woman.” But I can just sit there and shut down for a bit. That’s nice.
Maia: It’s a wonderful state, isn’t it? [Yeah] There’s a neuroscientist named Arne Dietrich who studies the neuroscience of flow? He’s looking into that and he said something really interesting in a podcast interview that I heard him give which is that states of flow and a lot of the states that we call “higher consciousness” are actually reduced consciousness. They’re states in which we can turn off the part of our brain that is always analyzing and always anticipating.
Mary: That makes sense. [Yeah] That makes perfect sense. Because when I first started surfing I would overthink everything— overthinking, overthinking brain going brain going. And as I got better it got more and more quiet. And now I just shut down pretty much and just surf. That doesn’t happen on land. I’m always thinking— overthinking always going.
Maia: It is a— I think at this point in my life and I have, of course, like everybody an evolving sense of what is working and what’s not working and the world that I move through but that tendency that you just described is one of the motivating missions of this podcast— that I think so few American grown-ups have that regular kind of a fully embodied immersive experience and it’s so important if you have access to it and it doesn’t have to be through surfing right but it looks to me like surfers have a pretty good handle literally they can grab a hold of and maybe more easily than some other sorts of athletes or practitioners but it really does feel so important especially now as computers and automation and robotics are taking over more and more of our physical existence to have some sense of connection and relationship and, and worth that comes through who we are as these human animals is just so important.
Mary: As just people! Not connected to your career or your things none of that matters I should be a Buddhist. I’m not but I should be a Buddhist.
Maia: There are aspects of what you say that, that strike me as very Buddhist to the extent I understand what that means.
Mary: I have little attachment to things like when my board got stolen I was mad because I like the board bag you know. I can get another surfboard, it’s gonna cost me something but I really like the board bag. But of course, most people would say the important thing was the surfboard but who cares. Whoever stole it , you better ride it well. I just feel like people are important things are important.
Maia: We were talking our way to San Onofre this morning and you were talking about your— let’s call it an ambivalent relationship with Southern California where it’s— I have to say I have has been here working but completely on my own schedule and able to control when I move around and still the traffic is untenable. So I can understand your impulse to want to move away from here when your life circumstances allow. And you said something on the way to San Onofre this morning which surprised me but, but shouldn’t given your non-attachment orientation which is that when you move away if it’s necessary to give up surfing you would. You would happily do that.
Mary: Oh yeah. I mean I’m trying to teach my son life is about balance and as much as I would love to serve forever I’m also 56. Which means I’m getting older and I’ve been athletic my whole life so my body is now I can start to feel it starting to fall apart. But I’m still in good shape! But I also have met the one. I mean he is the one. I want to go where he wants to go and neither one of us wants to be here. And I just want to be with him and I want to get old with him and die with him to be truthful. So if that means we don’t live near the ocean I give up surfing that’s fine. I’ve surfed! I’ve had a good time but my life is going to move in a different direction especially physically. I’ve have had a knee replacement I have an ankle with three screws and a plate. I’m getting older so I don’t even think I’m going to surf forever. So I’m ready to move on if I have to.
Maia: And I find it fascinating that your surfer journey began as your motherhood journey began and your son is now 17. So, you’ve done a really good job and he’s probably going to move on in the next few years and that these journeys might be paired and
Mary: I didn’t even see that I didn’t think of that until you mentioned it.
Maia: Yeah, maybe letting go of both at the same time even if you keep surfing and keep mothering— they’ll be different than they were.
Mary: Right. Oh yeah! I mean, you love your kids but once they hit this age you’re thinking, “OK you can go do your thing now.” Because you want your freedom and I’ve been a single parent for the last, I don’t know four years, five years, and that’s rough!
Maia: It seems nearly impossible from my perspective.
Mary: Well, he’s a great kid so it hasn’t been that tough but I think he wants his freedom. I want my freedom. We love each other to death but it’s it’s time.
Maia: So if there’s a segment of my audience, which I think there is, that feels like they would love to have some sort of disciplined play practice— cause surfing takes some discipline— but they haven’t, for whatever reason, they’ve they’ve allowed life or life has gotten in the way. What would you say to them?
Mary: It’s time to put yourself first. People don’t do that. They think they are supposed to go get that career, go get that money, go, that’s not putting you first. That’s putting what society tells you is supposed to come first. What do you want to do? Maybe you want to open a woodshop and just work on wood? Why don’t you do that? I mean I think part of it is Americans are fearful, we’re fearful. And there’s something in me, I don’t know what it is that doesn’t have a lot of fear so I’ll jump without a safety net. I’ll quit a job I don’t care. Now mind you I’m never going be homeless because my family has property but I can be moneyless! But I do… we’re not going be here for that long so you have to think about what it is you want out of your life. I don’t have a bucket list. If there’s something I want to do I do it and if I can’t do it then it’s not on the list.
Maia: That’s part of that letting go of control isn’t it? [yeah] So interesting! Yeah, it is fascinating sometimes to watch especially multi-generation families where it looks like everyone is sacrificing for everyone else— the kids are suffering trying to please the parents and the parents are suffering trying to take care of the kids and somehow we’re were missing the whole point of being alive and appreciative and grateful…
Mary: And you know let’s face it that comes with some privilege. Now if you’re an immigrant who was come here to make a better life for your kid or kids and you have to work, work, work and your wife or your spouse or whoever has to work, work, work, then you really don’t have the freedom like I think you do. But maybe you can take a little bit of time for you, you know… I get it. There is privilege. Even though I’m black I know I have privilege. I have middle-class privilege and I don’t deny that. So I can take these leaps of faith and know I’m not going splat on the ground. I’ll survive [absolutely] And I think other people need to know that too— you’re, you’ll survive. [Yeah] You will Believe it.
Maia: Yes. It’s Yeah It’s a really good point. Depending on who you are and what your circumstances there’s sometimes fear is not baseless but.. And many times it is.
That there, there is. And I don’t know if it’s cultivated in us or if we do it to ourselves but we do really have this “It’s Never Enough” orientation I think as a culture…
Mary: I guess, and for me it’s— I always feel like “That’s too much. I don’t want all that. I don’t want all those things. Which is why I want to get in the Class B with my man and drive off. We have this little box with four wheels and we have each other.
Maia: What else do you need?
Mary: Done. Good enough.
Maia: So beautiful! My gosh I hope that happens for you!
Mary: I think it will.
Maia: As I myself have moved out of working for someone else and began working for myself over the last couple of years I definitely have had a little bit of identity panic
Mary: Of course, you’re an American.
Maia: Which has been really interesting to see that in myself. I don’t think of myself— I’ve always been a little underemployed relative to my peers, if not a lot underemployed but it really has been fascinating to watch this and, and to see what I do when I’m not pushed with my time and I definitely rest more. I definitely take better care of myself. I eat better. I cook more but I also have this amazing capacity— and talk about privilege it’s such a gift— to follow an idea down and follow it right down to the ground if that takes a week or a year. And beautiful things are coming from that like finding you and your blog [thank you!]. You know I never would have had this incredible experience of of these days that we spent together and learning from you and, and seeing the way you interact with this environment and navigate all this nasty traffic and, you know, and talk to you about your delightful son whose, you know, whose growing up in a lot of ways is chronicled in that blog. [He is!] He’s not the center of it but he is right there in the center of it, if that makes sense.
Mary: He is— he was a little kid, now he’s grown. 6’1” 120 pounds, string bean, [laugh] hair on his face. He’s a great kid. I’m very proud of him.
Maia: He also writes, is that correct?
Mary: He does. He wants to be a writer and I spend all my money at Barnes & Noble. Either I spend all my money on food, even though he ways 120 pounds or taking him to Barnes & Noble to buy more books and how do you say no? “I want to go to Barnes & Noble and buy some books.” Okay. Alright.
Maia: Stomach food or brain food for that growing man.
Mary: Exactly
Maia: So what else have you learned in your life as a surfer or as your life as a surfer has interwoven with your life as a mother or a daughter? What have you learned from surfing that you could share with the audience?
Mary: What haven’t I learned from surfing? That’s really what I’m thinking! What have I learned? I don’t know, my life changed quite a bit because of surfing, because of the blog. I tend to be, as I’ve told you, a lone wolf. I tend to be a homebody but surfing took me out of my shell and got me some attention that I hadn’t expected. So I don’t know— surfing has changed me. It’s made me a little more open to being out in public, I guess. Yeah.
Maia: Well it’s interesting to some extent you are a little bit of a public figure in the Southern California surfing scene…
Mary: I think, was… I don’t know if I still am but I used to be. Yeah, but now we have a generational shift so young people don’t know who I am They just know oh, there’s that black woman who surfs. Older people know me from the blog or just know me because there weren’t that many other black women surfing. There was me, there was Andrea… That’s about it. But now it’s changing.
Maia: It’s changing for the better?
Mary: For the better. I’m seeing a lot more black people on social media who surf, and people in the water, now I can go to a beach and go “Oh, there’s a person, there’s a person.”
Maia: Do you feel, I may be projecting here but [Okay] do you feel like you might in some way have played a part in that cultural shift?
Mary: No, I don’t.
Maia: It feels to me like you were a leader.
Mary: I don’t think I was, no because there was always a Black Surfing Association and that predated me o, no, I don’t think I had anything to do with it. I think I was the one who was vocal and just said, “Hey! We’re out here.” But I don’t think I caused anything.
Maia: I was walking, uh, I have a dear friend who was down visiting me at my house at the coast in North Carolina and we were walking across the Boardwalk to access the beach and I didn’t notice It but there was apparently this little girl, six or seven years old and my friend said, “She saw that surfboard and she watched you walk 100 yards towards her and then stopped and turned around and watched you walk away.” [Wow] Well, I wonder, you know, if that interaction right there with this older woman carrying a surfboard changed that girl’s life [I bet it did]. Like suddenly she sees a possibility and so I bet that happens all the time with you and you don’t pay any attention to it cause, you, you’re looking at the ocean!
Mary: Right! I know it’s happened a few times where I’ve seen black people just stop and look, “You surf?”
“Yeah, I surf.” Shock. Shock and awe. And maybe (or women?] It inspired some people, women, yeah, but then again here I go if they have straightened hair, they’re not going to go get in the ocean [Right]. So we need to get black women to let go of the hair. I’ve said to people if black women stop worrying about their hair you’re going to see some surfing! You will see black women in the water.
Maia: That’s so interesting.
Mary: It’s all about the hair. Yeah.
Maia: Okay. Well, I think your hair is fabulous!
Mary: Thank you, so do I!
Maia: They are wonderful and we’ll be sure to post a picture of you and your fabulous dreadlocks on the blog. Is there anything else that you would like to say to an audience, I would imagine primarily of non-surfers that you’ve learned in this long delicious chapter of surfing?
Mary: I would say stop taking work so seriously. What are you working for? I mean, I know what you’re working for. To get the house and the cars but what are you doing to feed your soul? It’s not your job. So you need to figure out what it is.
The End. Thank you very much.
Maia: Thank you very much! I really appreciate your time and especially appreciate the shared waves— so much fun!
That was fun. You should have caught that last wave with me though!!
Maia: If you enjoyed this interview, please consider sharing it with a friend and taking just a minute to give us a rating.
Like many people, I’m in a period of intense learning and recalibrating my priorities around new ways of seeing. To some white people I know, this is a little overwhelming. To me Ii’s a relief. It feels like we are finally willing to think together about dissolving the artificial barriers of race that have been reinforced for far too long, especially near the water. Racism and white supremacy, in our hearts and institutions, brutalizes our love and our capacity for connection, even when there are no batons or guns anywhere in sight. Even when we are at play, on a beach, waiting for the next beautiful wave.
To find links to ways to make a contribution of your energy or money to the crucial efforts to address racial disparities in comfort and safety near and on the water, visit wavestowisdom.com/SurfSista.
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