The Life Lessons of Paddle Boarding
You might think it’s all just fun and games, but you learn a lot out on the water…
The strangest thing happened to me this summer. I became a paddle boarder.
This might not seem strange, at all, to some. People dive into new hobbies all the time, and during the summer, it’s hardly odd that those hobbies might involve water.
But for me, this is strange. I happen to have a touch of thalassophobia, bathophobia, and megalohydrothalassophobia. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who peers into the depths of a lake and starts to panic… Thus, I’ve never imagined I’d end up owning a paddle board.
Perhaps strangest of all, however, is the timing of all this. This summer began at the six month mark of my father’s hospice stay — which was about six months longer than we’d assumed it was going to last, and it had no end in sight. Then, all of a sudden (or so it seemed), at the end of June, he stopped eating and was gone two days later.
A week after his death, on my birthday, my brother and his wife took me out to float on the river. Two days later, on the 4th of July, we went to a lake and rented a canoe, trembling in fear and excitement as we crossed the deep waters. A few days after that, we went back and tried paddle boarding.
