Many of us measure our lives by the ebb and flow of the sea. Photo: Unsplash
You begin like everyone else: in water. In salt. Suddenly, you tumble out into the light – your first wipeout. All around you, strange beings froth, so you scream, too, and for the first time, know your own voice.
Seconds, minutes, hours begin to pass; but for you, time doesn’t begin until they take you there. The crashing echoes in your tiny ears before you see the swells: blue, the color of mom’s eyes. The gulls call out, your feet disappear in the sand. This place, whatever it is, takes hold of you as the sky burns red and you fall asleep in dad’s arms. Don’t worry, you’ll return.
And you do. Month after month, year after year as you grow and learn and walk then run down the shoreline. First with dad or mom, then dropping their hands to fly, salt spraying your face, feet slapping the wet sand like a drum.
You ride your first wave on your dad’s back, hands clamped around his neck. You are gripped by the rush of water and power, baptized by salt and speed. You smile.
You try skimboarding first, fast and free and fun, even when the hard sand slams you. Next, body boarding with friends, rolling in the whitewash, shouting at the boundless blue sky. Then you spot an older kid holding one under their arm, jogging into the breakers. You watch, transfixed, as he paddles into a wave. He stands. Time stops. You cheer. You turn to mom, but she already knows. “Someday,” she says, shaking her head. “Someday.”
The months drag by until “someday” comes. Your uncle’s old beater, big and heavy and dented. You drag the board to the water and push your way out because finally, you’re going to show the entire beach how it’s done. Instead, you bang your head, slice your toe and at one point, get trapped under the board, you surface coughing and heaving. No one saw you. No one cares.
You trudge up to the beach, hang your head. But dad wipes your stinging eyes, says you did good. You perk your head up, pick the board back up. This time, dad dives in too, his white beard disappearing into the blue. “Here,” he yells. “Now!” He pushes you and suddenly you feel the greatest sensation. Smooth, fleeting flight. You push up with your hands and crouch, and just like that, you’re different. Changed.
You save up and finally pay for a used board with those endlessly sweltering days – early mornings, grass clippings, Gatorade and sweat. You try the board out at dusk way down the beach, quickly realizing there is no wrong way or right place to be, just the magical places that make the board climb the sloping current or send you tumbling into the foam.
Time drifts along faster now, the current quickening. Life begins to happen, things good and bad, sad, and happy. You bring it all to the sea, wash it all in the briny tides. You meet other surfers, hear stories of distant beaches and magical waves. Your arms grow ropey, your shoulders thick. Your skin is eternally freckled, stained by the sun. You watch the waves, you track the waves, you fear the waves. At night, you contemplate the tides and the shiny pull of the moon, the world open and infinite and bright.
You leave home to study great thinkers, philosophers, and scientists – but you also study waves. Ocean, mechanical, electromagnetic; it doesn’t matter. Your life is breakers, whitecaps, rollers, and you roll on, exploring. Life is an eternal paddle, gritty and hard but rewarding, limitless.
You find a job near the ocean and establish an offbeat rhythm: work hard, then travel and surf. Rinse and repeat. You own too many boards. You trade some, sell some, give some away, buy more. You visit your parents and they’re older, silver hair and laugh lines, and they tell the story of bringing you to the shore for the first time at crowded tables as the wine flows like water. Life folds and unfolds, friends appear and disappear, but the waves always return to you.
On an island in the Pacific, you meet a girl. She makes fun of your pink sunburn, you trip into her green eyes. She likes to surf and she might be better than you. Check that, she’s way better than you. You try to impress her and flip over and under the tides. You surface, she smiles, and it’s like dropping into a glassy right, but better. Way better.
You travel, surf, get married with your bare feet in the sand, find a home near the break you grew up on. Soon you have a child, then another: a girl and a boy. You look at them and wonder if they will surf, but don’t really care. The years rocket by now, swooping like birds over the gray swells.
At dawn your body creaks like an old tree. You surf early or late or whenever you can, but not quite as much. You ride a mid-length and think it’s a silly term for a board you still rip on. But doesn’t much of the world seem crazy now? Your wife says it’s called being old, and you both laugh. You bring your children to the beach and realize that life is cyclical yet unpredictable, broken but smooth, perfectly imperfect. You dive deep, let those deep thoughts go, and surface smiling, reborn every time.
Daylight fades, the days grow shorter, and you say too many goodbyes. You paddle out a little slower, your beard white as seafoam, just like dad’s used to be. You ride every wave you can, take nothing for granted. The beach is eroded, smaller, but just as beautiful. Your life is as worn and smooth and beautifully flawed as beach glass. Your daughter surfs, your son doesn’t, and your wife says that’s just as well, because women are better surfers, and you laugh when she covers your daughter’s ears and says: “Pipeline’s for the fucking girls.” Because it is.
Time plays loose and fast now, too slippery to catch. Some days you’re certain that it’s been a long, full stack of years, a mountain of memories you can barely summit. Other days you’re up before the first golden rays of sun, before the bird song and the crash of the breakers and swear it’s your first day on earth and you’re still learning to paddle and stand up.
Your children leave home in search of new stories, you hope they remember yours. Tired arms pull you through the swells, your eyes blink in the blinding sun. You pivot and stand up for the thousandth time and the entire world turns on axis, then disappears as you choose your line. This is your voice, the way you first heard it. The way you’ve always heard it. This is your canvas, your brush, your strings.
One day, you kiss your wife, tell her you love her, and paddle out, patiently stroking over the jagged peaks until they soften. The current ebbs, the water is glass. You lie on your back and watch the colors. Blue to green, red to black. Silver to white. When it’s time, you roll over, push the board the way dad first pushed you, and return to water. To tides. To salt.
And when the swell rises, you smile, kick your feet, and begin again.
