My mother the surfer: A week alone in Waikiki, riding the waves at seventeen.

Practicing in her father’s wetsuit.

In 1961, my mother spent a week of her summer break by herself in Hawaii for her 17th birthday.

That was cool. And brave.

But even more brave and cool? She spent her days on the island surfing.

“When I finished six weeks of summer school, I went to Hawaii for a week,” my mother wrote to her grandmother in Michigan that September.

“I was alone, I stayed at the Royal Manor at Waikiki. I really enjoyed myself there. The water is warm and the most beautiful colors. It ranges from a light green to a deep blue. 

The weather was nice while I was there, not hot and sticky. I swam every day. I board surfed a few times, and I stood up about three times. The waves weren’t big and they weren’t fast, just slow and small and easy to catch.”

I recently found this letter in my grandmother’s things, which also include all of my mother’s school report cards and dental examination records. I don’t know how my grandmother ended up with a letter my mother mailed to Michigan from Los Angeles, but I’m so glad she saved it so I could discover another cool thing about my mother.

I already knew she was far more brave and adventurous than me. At 20, she ditched the friends she was touring Europe with to hitchhike alone with a “beautiful, quiet” stranger who became my father.

I love the story of how my parents met, but I might love even more learning that my mother was a surfer, able even as a teenager to conquer the waves I was too chicken to face.

Like my mother, I grew up by the ocean. Unlike her, I preferred to keep my feet on the sand, loving to just watch the water and those with the courage to surf it.

But now watching surfers will be even cooler, because I will see my mother out there, riding the waves with them.