Do you remember your firsts?

I do. I remember my first ballet class, my first pair of pointe shoes, my first ski trip along with my best ride down Stump Alley at Mammoth, and even my first bra, lolz

Not having grown up on the west coast, I didn’t have a connection to the ocean until high school.

I recall my first time on a surfboard…it did NOT go well, and I almost broke my nose. This was not the sport for me. Decades later, I gave it another try. Once again, it didn’t go well. I ended up rolling and rolling under some giant NOT BEGINNER waves, and the next day I was covered in the ugliest bruises. That was IT for me.

Angel Girl takes gymnastics and was obsessed with cartwheels. Tenacious girl that she is, she tried and practiced and kept at it until the mechanics of a cartwheel finally clicked and she perfected it. “Watch me, Grandma!” “See, I can do it now!”

What an amazing sense of accomplishment and mastery of a difficult skill. “Great job, girl!”

Even though we live so close to the ocean, the original Angel Boy didn’t really like to surf, mainly because without his glasses, he can’t see a thing, and it was a scary endeavor unless he had a buddy with him. He’d boogie board a lot, but never really got into surfing until he started wearing contacts.

Now he has a quiver of boards here and at his house, too.

To encourage AB 2.0, he’s been taken along for (gentle) rides on a surfboard since he was about a year old.

This past weekend, it finally clicked for him, too. He stood up and surfed his first legit wave!

This is a bad photo because I took it from the video, but I can feel T’s sense of pride. It didn’t matter that it was a small wave: HE DID IT, and OMG, he’s a carbon copy of his dad.

Predictably, you couldn’t get him out of the water after that. He’s completely hooked, and now Dad has a lifelong surfing buddy. As an aside, is there anything cuter than a little grom in a wetsuit?

I hope they never forget these significant firsts, and since we have video of all of it, I can imagine they’ll show their own children these amazing accomplishments.

Grandma pride RULES!