Understatement: my 40th year was not exactly a balmy summer breeze.

In the space of about 10 months, I’d moved our family from my native California to Colorado for a new job, bought my first house, gotten pregnant with our second child, suddenly wasn’t pregnant—and then suddenly wasn’t employed.

When I had the opportunity to take a weeklong trip to Mexico with Las Olas Surf Safaris for Women, it seemed like the best kind of medicine for a world-weary Cali girl deficient in Vitamin Sea.

Until I started to pack, that is.

It being early spring in Denver, my swimsuits were still in the basement; I dutifully hauled the box upstairs and dumped it on the bed. These were my three options: a teeny bikini purchased on my last trip to Mexico (tags still on), and two frowsy maillots from my first summer as a mommy. I felt a bit like Goldilocks…except that nothing felt just right.

I tried on the bikini first, and immediately wondered what on Earth had made me buy it. It seemed to have significantly less coverage than any swimsuit I’d ever owned—not quite a skimpy Brazilian bottom, but not exactly concealing my ample American butt-cheeks, either. Was I actually supposed to surf in this thing? I felt squishy and silly, and more than a little bit sad.

I wondered: were my bikini days over for good? And why did the maillot feel so much like defeat?

And so, on the plane ride, I thought long and hard about what it might mean to be a One-Piece Person from now on. Was it really so bad to admit that my abs were no longer fit for public consumption? It’s not like I’d ever been a supermodel—and now I had a toddler, drove a VW wagon with goldfish crackers mashed into the floorboards, and looked like every other mom at the neighborhood pool. Getting older is, like, so basic. And yet I obsessed about my burgeoning basic-ness up until the very moment I stepped onto Mexican soil.

As we were suiting up for our first day of surfing, my surf-camp roommate shimmied into a sporty two-piece while I side-eyed my options. Looking over, she asked casually, “What’s the one-piece for?” As if it were a befuddling artifact, like a VHS tape. “Coverage?” I replied, feeling simultaneously like a little girl and a very old lady. “Yeah, but what happens when you have to take a dump?” she asked.

Huh. This, I had not considered.

And so, out of sheer digestive necessity, I wiggled into my itsy-bitsy bikini, sprayed the exposed parts of my jiggly mombod with sunscreen and tried not to feel too self-conscious.

But you know what? As it turns out, a beginning surfer has quite a few things to think about, including but not limited to: paddling hard, popping up, balancing without looking like a stink bug, not crashing into anyone, not getting thwacked by your own board and dismounting without looking like a total spaz.

Oh, and a few other things you might be thinking about: how the ocean looks like sea glass at dawn; how lovely it is to feel all of your muscles working together in pursuit of a common goal; whether you should have bacon or sausage (or both) in your breakfast burrito; the pure joy of “making girls out of women,” as the Las Olas tagline goes; how priceless it will be to initiate your daughter into the sisterhood of surfing one day.

In short, I had more important things to think about than my butt. Which we all do, every day of our lives.

Yet it can be so easy to get snared in what’s “wrong” in any given moment that we sometimes forget how many things are really, really right.

During my week at surf camp, I had so many things be grateful for, both large and small. A family who loves me enough to send me to surf camp. Bougainvillea. Baja-striped blankets. Talavera. Fish tacos. Paddling out with new friends. Teaching my old body some new tricks. That heavenly rocking feeling you get when you’re falling asleep after a long day in the ocean. And the sudden certainty that you have awakened something bold and luminous within.

That elusive shining something—that is what I saw in the mirror the day I bought the bikini, and it wasn’t really about how I looked at all.

It took me more than 40 years to figure it out, but that “bikini body” the magazines are talking about? Whether you feel loveliest in a swimsuit that’s full coverage or barely there, it’s the brilliant beauty inside that’s giving you that glow.

So go ahead: “si” and be seen.

 

Relephant Read:

How to Get a Bikini Body.

 

Author: Staci Amend

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: Author’s Own