My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life (4 page)

Once our plans were firmed up, I set about doing what I always do—getting us organized for our trip. I am an organizer
by nature. It makes me feel better to have things dialed in and under control, and I’d be the organizer of my household regardless of whether I lived alone or with a husband and ten children. I am the boss of the endless sometimes mind-numbing minutiae that comes with domestic life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The day before we flew from Kaua’i to Washington, D.C., I was upstairs packing for our trip and I heard Laird’s truck in the driveway. Then I heard him bustle in, bustle out, hop back in the truck, and roar off. I was folding the shirts I know to be his favorite. The same ones I’d dragged out of the bottom of Laundry Mountain that very morning, and then washed in a separate load to make sure they were dry in plenty of time to pack in his suitcase. I was packing my beloved’s shirts, with love and care and thoughtfulness, while he dashed in and dashed back out. It sounds like a little thing, and actually, it
was
a little thing, but I was tweaked nonetheless. I bust my ass at home, and I’m happy to do it, but every so often I start feeling a little too much like the house gnome. I’m fully willing to believe that I’m overreacting, but I learned years ago that it’s better to risk an argument than to try to pretend something doesn’t bug me.

I called Laird and asked what was going on, that I’d heard him come in. I wasn’t about to pounce and blame—at least not at the moment. I’m a big believer in right time, right place. You have to do something pretty heinous to have me react in the moment.

It’s something a lot of my girlfriends struggle with—feeling
something deeply, but holding off on expressing it until the time is right. But seriously, if you can hang out with your feelings for an hour, or even a day, you’ll have the time you need to cool down and approach the situation like a rational human being. This tends to yield better results. I’m not suggesting you repress or deny your dissatisfaction, but you don’t need to react instantly.

Sometimes it’s just better to hang a heavy bag in the corner of your garage and work out on that when Prince Charming is exhibiting behavior neither charming nor princely. Or call your best girlfriend and go for a long march around your neighborhood, where you can rant and rave with complete freedom.

On the phone, I could hear Laird was distracted. He was deep in one of his board designing projects, or maybe milling some wood, which is just about his favorite dry-land pastime, something he does to occupy himself until the ocean serves up some suitable swells. Really, his entire day involves keeping the ocean in his peripheral vision. He always wants to keep rolling, getting all his chores done for the day so he can get some surfing in before dark.

Several years ago Laird was a guest on
The Colbert Report
, and by way of welcoming him to the show Stephen said, “I am an admirer of what you do physically. I think it’s beautiful. But I got to hammer you here a minute. You ready to ride this wave? Get a job. Time to grow up.”

The audience howled and Laird threw back his head and laughed, too. It’s true. People go surfing on vacation. Or surfers
are teenage boys who still live at home where Mom does their laundry and their car insurance is miraculously paid for. But surfing is Laird’s job. It’s his career. He loves it, and it defines him, but it’s also his
work
. He’s spent decades practicing, perfecting, innovating.

He isn’t just a surfer; he’s also invented three different techniques that are so radical, they’ve changed the entire sport. In the 1990s, Laird and some of his friends, frustrated that they couldn’t surf the huge outer-reef breaks—they couldn’t get to them, and couldn’t paddle fast enough to catch them—started riding out on Jet Skis and towing one another into the monster swells. Tow-in surfing was born. Now, when the ocean cooperates, he regularly surfs thirty-five-foot waves. The biggest wave he’s ever snagged was seventy-five feet, then he carved across the wall of water going fifty miles an hour. Tow-in has completely revolutionized the way surfers approach the ocean.

There’s a gnarly wave that breaks at Teahupo’o in Tahiti, a thick wall of water that folds itself over a sharp coral reef only twenty inches beneath the surface. Considered by the surfing world as one of the deadliest waves on earth, a wipeout means pretty much certain death. On August 17, 2000, Laird rode it, making history and the cover of
Surfer
magazine, with the caption
oh my god . . .

But changing the course of surfing history wasn’t enough for him. He went on to develop modern-day stand-up paddling, and hydrofoil boarding (“foiling”), which allows him to ride a huge swell in the middle of the ocean that doesn’t even need to break.

The man is always ready. This very minute, as you’re reading this, somewhere in the world, one of those heavy, world-class swells might be brewing, and Laird has to be in peak physical condition to ride it. In all of his appearance contracts he has what’s called a “twenty-foot clause,” which excuses him from the event if there’s a wave twenty feet or taller breaking anywhere in the world. When
Riding Giants
opened the Sundance Film Festival in 2004, I flew from Maui to Utah with three-month-old Reece, while Laird stayed behind to surf Pe’ahi, on the north shore.

Work is work. Dentist husbands have to see
X
number of patients and landscape architect husbands have to see that so many shrubs are planted, and professor husbands have to teach so many classes, and Laird has to put so many hours into being a waterman. Depending on what the waves are doing that day, he might go surfing or foiling or stand-up paddling. He might spend all day working on a design for a new board or tweaking an old one. The ocean is his office.

No one knows this better than I do, or understands the kind of frustration he feels when everyday life intervenes and threatens to keep him from doing his job. But I’m his wife, not the hired help. And on this day, when I was rushing around trying to get us packed for our long fight across one ocean and one continent, his self-absorption was getting on my nerves.

On the phone I laid it out. “Look,” I said, “when have I ever stopped you from doing what you wanted and needed to do? I’m your biggest advocate. You know this, right? The thirty
seconds it would take for you to come upstairs and say, ‘Hey babe, how’s it going?’ is not too much to ask.”

He apologized.

Laird is one of those men who isn’t afraid to say he’s sorry. Which works out well for us, because I’m one of those women who, once I accept someone’s apology, I’m over it.

•  •  •

It’s not as if Laird and I knew how to make a marriage work from the stellar examples set by our parents.

Laird’s birth father disappeared before he was a year old. His dad, L. G. Zerfas, and mom, Joann, met in high school, in homeroom. Her last name was Zyirek. You can imagine how it was, two attractive adolescents marooned together at the end of the alphabet. Joann was nineteen when Laird was born. There were a lot of boyfriends after that, a revolving door of guys, until Bill Hamilton came along.

Laird met his future stepdad on the north shore of Oahu. Laird was the brat on the beach, tagging along after the cool older guys. Bill, a fixture at Pupukea at the time, and also a respected designer and fabricator of high-end boards, took Laird under his wing. Bill was only maybe eighteen when Laird introduced him to his mom.

Bill married Joann, gave Laird his name, and the three of them moved from Oahu to Kaua’i. For the next ten years Laird watched Bill and his mom, whom he adored, break up and get back together. It was a tumultuous marriage, and in 1977 it ended. Joann eventually fell in love with a good man,
but Laird witnessed his beloved mother endure a lot of shabby treatment for most of her life. She was a hard worker—she started the first helicopter tour business in Kaua’i—and always seemed to be involved with men who weren’t. As a result, Laird is old-fashioned in his treatment of women, almost courtly.

My own parents didn’t fare much better on the happily ever after front. I was born in La Jolla, California, in 1970. My father was Trinidadian, studying in California, and my mother was from Long Island and spending time there. They met at a party in Marina del Rey, stayed together for a few years after I was born, then split up. My father stayed in California, while I went with my mother. She traveled a lot for her work—training dolphins—and I spent many of my early years living with Aunt Norette and Uncle Joe, whose marriage was hiking-boot sturdy. Norette and Joe weren’t really my aunt and uncle but neighbors in Amityville. Even though they weren’t blood relatives, they were like family.

Norette and Joe had met when they were only fifteen. Life wasn’t easy for them. They were working class, emphasis on working. I suspect I get my love of grinding from them. They arose in the dark every morning: she drove a school bus, he worked construction, and also, for a time, for the New York Department of Sanitation. They were like oxen yoked together, plowing through life like the friends that they were. Sometimes it seemed as if they were just putting up with each other, but I did witness what it looked like for a husband and wife to present an allied front.

One day when I was five I was sitting on my bed and heard the phone ring in the kitchen. Norette and Joe had a tiny house. My bedroom was next to the kitchen, and I could easily hear anyone talking on the phone. After Norette picked up the phone and said hello, I could tell something terrible had happened. My father was dead, killed in a plane crash.

I eventually moved with my mother to the Virgin Islands. She married a man named José, an attorney, with whom she shared an interest in travel, language, and food. They were passionate for each other, and for having fun. Life in St. Thomas with my mom and José was one big party; the nitty-gritty part of marriage, the day-in, day-out aspect of it eluded them.

I was thirteen when they separated. José didn’t do much to create a stable environment, but he was good to me. Even after I won a full scholarship to Florida State, he sent me three hundred dollars every month. Walking around money, he called it.

By the time I was eighteen, I was on my own, and I didn’t harbor a lot of high-minded hopes about ever having a working, successful marriage based on mutual love and respect.

But then there was Laird. And together—through a lot of stumbling and false starts—we’ve learned how to do it.

For one thing, we try to surround ourselves with people who know how to have good marriages. Not that these people don’t struggle, but they’re open about it. They’re straight shooters.

In the same way that people who want to eat better have a better shot at succeeding when they hang out with people
who eat well, spending time with couples who are making their marriages work ups the odds that you’ll make yours work, too.

Laird and I are friends with a couple who disagree more than they agree. And there’s none of this “agreeing to disagree” business; they go at it. We’ve witnessed them argue, but there’s no dirty pool. There’s no trying to punish the other guy for disagreeing. For us, they offer an example of how to play fair, how to stand up for yourself while also feeling you’re not going to get bitch slapped for owning your feelings and opinions.

Plus, it’s always good to avoid operating in a marital vacuum. How reassuring is it to know that the most happily married couples you know go through the same stuff you do? That the most squared-away, in-love husband and wife tussle over who left the last half inch of milk in the carton?

Another thing I’ve learned is that it’s crucial to defend my marriage. Last year I was in New York and I got a call from my friend Tiffany in Kaua’i, asking if everything was okay, and if there was anything she could do. I had no idea what she was talking about. It turned out a mutual friend had gone to a class at Cross Fit in Malibu and the instructor, as part of his beginning of class chatter, mentioned that Laird and I were getting divorced.

I immediately called Cross Fit and left a message for him. I told him what I’d heard and that it was bad enough he was spreading gossip that wasn’t close to being true, but that he was doing it in my neighborhood, where I did my shopping and where my children went to school. He called me back in
about three minutes, and left a message, mortified. He wanted me to call him back so he could explain himself.

Yeah, right.

I’m willing to believe it may be more difficult for us because we’re in the public eye, but even if we were a pair of grade-school teachers living in a cul-de-sac, and the people two doors down were talking trash about us to the neighbors, I’m pretty sure I would still march down the street, knock on the door, and have it out.

•  •  •

Laird and I have a solid marriage in part because we share a value system. He makes me think, makes me laugh, is an inspiration in his ability to focus on what’s important to him (his family, but also being true to his own calling, and to himself), and a lot of nights we crawl into bed—such party animals are we, the lights are often out by nine-thirty—and stay up too late talking. Just talking. About what happened during our day and how that’s made us aware of our good fortune, about Reece and Brody and Bela and how different they are, and how we might better parent them, about the house we’re building overlooking the Hanalei River.

My life is good and I’m grateful for every minute of it and blah blah blah.

Yes, blah blah blah, because one of the truest, most mysterious things about us humans is that however much we have, however good things are, it’s the little, niggling, everyday things that threaten to bring down the big, good things.

It’s your sweetie’s inability to keep track of the car keys, or be on time to pick up the kids from soccer practice, or failure to move the clothes from the washing machine to the dryer when he sat there and looked you in the eye and promised he would do it during halftime, that somehow winds up eclipsing his good qualities.

It really is the straw that breaks the camel’s back, the snow-flake that triggers the avalanche. There’s a great, goofy children’s book called
Who Sank the Boat?
that illustrates the dilemma perfectly. A donkey, sheep, cow, and pig all decide they want to go for a row. As each animal climbs aboard, the little boat rides lower and lower in the water. But who sinks the boat? The mouse who hops on at the last minute.