I remember the terror of surfing Hurricane Gloria back in the 1980s, recall dropping into a twenty-foot bomb, must have been. My one wave that day.
I can still feel the horror of getting trapped on the inside afterwards, and watching guys who were trying to make it back out, get swirled up and back over the falls, a dance of arms and legs; akimbo meat puppets in a collosal, merciless washing machine.
I can still see the wall of whitewater coming to get me next, as I turned my single-fin Bunger surfboard, a sort of proto-gun from 1979 shaped in Maine. I can feel the gush of air trying to escape my lungs as a ten foot wall of white and spray hit me in the back. The second I spent like a rodeo rider trying to belly land in front of the white water and not pearl it seemed to go on forever.
That experience was not nearly as terrifying as what happened to me today.
I have been trapped outside on ten foot sets before I went all soft and to belly, that is, having to swim in after my leash snapped, and still I have never had so much fear running through me as I did today.
Today's waves were larger than Hurricane Bill's which Sean and I both had relatively little trouble with back in August.
Today, a line was drawn, definitely between what I am physically capable of anymore, and what my 13 year old son can seemingly do with little effort. And it absolutely scares the hell out of me.
Because, on a day like today, as it stands, I can't get to him, if something goes wrong. Things I know can go wrong because I have survived them. He hasn't, yet. But one day he will have to.
We had checked our favorite beach, Juan Ponce De Leon Park, but it was crowded with a surf competition. So we headed to choice number 2, Coconut Point Park about two miles north.
It looked deceptively do-able for both of us, but I was nervous. He suited up with his O'Neal wetsuit and his board, walked north about a hundred yards to account for drift, and began stretching.
Anatomy of a problem in the making: someone forgot the wax. Whether or not it is a physical problem, it is a psychological one which can break the first chink in your mental armor.
I have no need of a wetsuit, but my ritual, the wax-on, was absent, which left me feeling incomplete.
The paddle begins into the four foot sections of white-water rolling in. He begins paddling north to account for drift and crosses in front of me. I have to paddle more southerly to get my 10.0 Walden out of the clutches of this southward drift.
"If I get washed in, you follow me," I said. I didn't want him out here in this without a buddy. Some of the walls coming in, thundering over with whitewater and spray were more than 10 feet on the face. As I am watching him, more than I am looking out for what I should be doing, I paddled right into a Macker outside set with whitewater cresting.
I took my first wave, never having reached the outside, outside, the safe zone where I could have rested and regrouped. It was a decent wave, but it took me into the impact zone and I never made it back out.
He did make it, and he was knotted up with a group of surfers who had followed us out, and showed no signs of wanting to come back in.
I walked back to where my daughter Emily was sitting and put the board down, content to just watch him, then, and be ready if he needed my help.
Pretty soon, towering sets came in, removing all trace of him in lines of spray and whitewater.
The drift dragged those with him to the south. When I last saw him, Sean was three hundred yards or so out, paddling to the north very swiftly.
Ten minutes went by, and I could not see him. I walked to the top of the dune walkover, thirty feet above sea level but I still could not see him.
My daughter Emily and I were getting very nervous at this point. A true Bermuda Triangle moment if there ever was one. Swallowed by the sea. It seemed that he had absolutely vanished. We watched as other surfers took off, got creamed, bailed, or made their waves one by one, but none of them were Sean.
I took the board and paddled toward the knot of surfers he had last been with and began screaming for him. I envisioned him losing his board, unable to make it back to shore.
How to describe the terror?
I heard myself making sounds that only a wounded animal makes; chimpanzees in a zoo, grief striken with the loss of a mate or a baby. I was sure we had lost him. And I was reduced to an animal state, of grief and terror. A mama chimp, screaming. Astonished beachgoers looking.
A neighbor child died of a gymnastic accident when Sean was six. This boy was Sean's best friend in the world. We have never fully recovered from this trauma. We knew this child, Steven, very well. The unimaginable grief suffered by the parents haunts us from a distance, still.
Sean himself will admit feelings of grief, and a strange sort of kinship with death. He knows it's there, nearby. His attitude is, it could take any one of us, at any minute, so by all means, live, enjoy while you can. I never expected my Irish-American boy to have so much Spaniard in him.
This is not my attitude at all, regarding the dark stranger called death. I want my children to avoid that specter at all costs.
Six years ago another young boy of 13 was lost at sea on a day just like today. We didn't know him. He later was discovered north of Sebastian Inlet. He had met his match and drowned.The beach walkover at Atlantic Avenue, once a year, bears a wreathe and messages from his buddies, and his parents. This went through my mind as I was screaming for my boy. This surfer child passes through my mind at least once, every time we surf.
When he heard my hollering finally, he rose up on his board and took one giant wave in. He was fine. Not a scratch on him. He had been laying down on his board because everytime he sat up, another set came in and threatened to swamp him.
I collapsed on the beach, having aged perhaps three years in one surf session. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes had elapsed.
"Dad, anyone can drown at any time," he said by way of explanation.
Again, Sean's familiarity with death coming through. His peculiar, precocious acceptance of this natural phenomenon.
Again he's angry at me for being such a worry-wart and killjoy. I try to explain to him that he'll understand how I feel when he teaches his own son to surf.
But I know, because I have heard him speak on it before, he's thinking that there really are no assurances from any universal force that he'll live to see his own children learn to surf. After all, look what happened to our neighbor, Steven.
I am angry at him for yelling at me, for being concerned for his safety, again. We head home. My choice. He should have come in when I did, and he didn't. I am still in charge of his safety.
He may be an excellent swimmer, and a great surfer in the making, I say, but he is not God. Not out there. If he had lost his leash, and gotten trapped outside, he would not have been able to swim in. I know because it happened to me once and at 18 I barely made it in on a day like today.
He's still pouting in the rear view mirror as we drive home.
After we were home for about an hour, Emily was on the couch crying. She said through tears " I thought he was dead." I comfort her. "I did too."
The time is 7:26 p.m. Sean walked up to me less than a hour ago and apologized for worrying me and explained why he wasn't sitting up on his board so I could see him. We talk a bit more. And straighten it out.
Sometimes it isn't about the surfing. It isn't about that at all.
Dad's weight 244 lbs
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