Cobblestone Memories

There’s a picture that hangs in my dad’s garage of him teaching me how to surf. It’s a grainy eight by six that was blown up at Kinkos from a grainy four by six original. It’s framed with small pieces of driftwood and shells and hangs in an inconspicuous spot on the wall, under his triathlon medals, where no one but us would recognize it’s sacred. 

In the photo, we’re at San Onofre on the very inside of a medium low tide. I’m squatting on a longboard, riding the small white wash, looking back at my dad who stands in knee deep water about fifteen feet behind the wave. Even through the blurry picture, you can see his big smile. I’m smiling, too. We’re both making eye contact.

The picture captures a sacred moment of a father passing along to his son the one main thing his heart has always loved the most, the rudder to his life: a passion for the ocean and specifically, surfing. Since that day when I was four years old, my dad and I have shared hundreds of sessions together. The greatest gift on earth, a wave riding relationship with the ocean, I have received with a joy and gratitude I cannot fully understand. I’ve had the privilege of sharing hundreds of surf sessions with my dad. They weren’t all Christmas. In the shortsightedness of my youth, I often complained when the waves weren’t good enough to prop up my inflated expectations of my high performance surfing progression, or when I paddled out at SanO, a longboard wave, riding a little shortboard. I cried the time when my dad, who had just bought me a brand new Al Merrick and forgot to strap it down on the roof of the car on the toll road. I wasn’t a complete brat. But my memory is selective to these embarrassing moments of unappreciative criticism because as an adult, I realize now what I didn’t realize then, that the main characteristic I have come to identify myself, is the recipient of the gift of surfing given by my father.

As an adult, I have been fortunate enough to be brought to a place in life where I can deeply appreciate that gift and recognize myself primarily as its recipient. I have had hundreds of sessions with my dad. Lately, in the slow and deliberate appreciation of life given to me through sobriety, I have come to cherish our time in the water together in light of the temporary nature of life. My dad is getting older. One day I won’t get to surf with him anymore. 

I remember being in the water with him as a toddler. He stood on the bottom and held me in his arms as he introduced me to the ways of the living ocean. As waves of white water approached us, he instructed me, “Okay Tiger, close your eyes and hold your breath. We’re going under.” We went under and I was immersed into a new world. The world underwater. The pressure changed. The sound was muted except for the soft roar of the wave rushing past us. The outside world was lightyears away. Under the waves I found peace as I learned from him, “the safest place is the bottom.” 

For all my life I have had recurring dreams of diving under waves. I see a huge wave coming and I dive for the bottom and watch it rumble over me in safety. In real life, it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes you dive down and the wave grabs you and dominates you for a while before letting go. But in my dreams it’s always that same feeling of safety and peace like those first times I dove to the bottom in the arms of my dad. 

I have come to understand my relationship with God in the same way. More than the gift of surfing, I have received the gift of an earthly father who has set an example which I can come to understand my heavenly Father. Still, my dad fell short. But I know that I can take his best qualities and understand that’s what God is like. He holds me safely under the waves. He gives me the gift of surfing. He teaches me that the best part about life is surfing with Him.