Oceanside

The pier at Oceanside, California is a long, wooden walkway that juts seaward from the beach. On bare feet it is hot and slivered. Not very comfortable.

A bottle with a hand-written message is held in my left hand. I wrote it a few minutes ago while sitting on the beach on the north side of the pier.

The message is for Brittany, my daughter who passed away a year and a half ago. We hope to make this a long tradition. I feel closer to her every time I write a letter.

We walk to the end of the pier, and one by one, we toss our bottles into the deep blue water. We watch them far below us bobbing up and down and gradually drifting one way or another. There is no clear direction yet. We hope they drift seaward instead of toward the coast.

When we are done, we make our way back to the beach and settle down south of the pier. The beach is busy. Today is Memorial Day. A Spiderman kite flies high with the wind. A family sits beneath a large umbrella with a cooler full of food. Women in bikini's and men in swim trunks lay on towels on the sand and brown their skin in the full sun.

One of the first curiosities I notice about this beach is how shallow it is. Frolickers of all sorts stand in the water at a significant distance from the shore and the water only comes to their thighs. What a good idea!

My shirt, my socks, my shoes, and my glasses all come off, and all that is left are my flowery-blue swim trunks. My bare feet step into the wet sand and white, foamy water rushes in and covers my ankles, then sucks back into the ocean. I walk in further and the water covers my shins, then knees, and now my thighs. A large wave with its rolling white water are within my reach and at once, I bring my hands together over my head and dive into the wave. A cacophony of tumbling seaweed and sand spin across my body. I stand up, my body above the waist out of the water, wipe the wetness from my eyes, and feel another rolling torrent hit me from behind. It knocks me off-balance and I fall to my side, a big smile on my face. I don't know that I've had this much fun on a beach since I was a kid!

I look behind me, and see my seventeen year old son, Jordan. He is here to join me. He's taller than me now. His trim, sculpted body is stronger than mine also. He was on the water polo team a couple of years ago.

We both dive into deeper water. We try swimming with the flow of the wave and ride it the way surfers do. That doesn't work too well. All our bodies manage to do is to sink beneath the water.

The crest of the waves lift high. The undulation of the water moves up and down and I find that if I can stay afloat on top that it is almost like jumping on a trampoline. The waves seem to be building bigger. We float atop the crest and watch the people on the shore become smaller as I am lifted higher. Pure exhilaration!

Soon, we realize that we are not quite so close to the beach anymore. The waves are no longer breaking, but just bobbing us up and down. Sometimes our feet no longer touch. Jordan and I look at each other and know that it is time to swim back to shore.

I go to my belly and begin swimming. Another large waves beats against us and leaves me panting.  I look at the shore and realize that we're not getting any closer.  I look over my shoulder to make sure that Jordan is still with me.

A life guard is in the water near us and yells out, “A rip tide is starting! You need to move, now!  It's an underwater current. Swim that way! Can you still touch?”

A small panic comes over me. I can see the distance we have moved from the shore and I can feel the swift traveling sand against my legs. We paddle and walk in slow-motion in a diagonal direction toward the beach. At last, the water comes to our thighs, then knees, then ankles. My chest heaves in and out and I feel light-headed as I walk toward the shore.

"We're lucky to be walking out of that one," I say to Jordan. 

The situation wasn't dire, but could have ended much worse. Perhaps Brittany was there with us. A nudge here, a whisper there.