Mortality

I love the beach. Actually, I love to swim in the surf. The sand is an unfortunate side effect of the beach that just has to be dealt with unless you’re in England. Then you have rocks instead.

I wade out into the ocean and meet the low waves with my back, turning around and throwing my arms in the air. As the waves crack against me it’s a smack that wakes me up, makes me feel alive. I yell with the exhilaration of it all, the bashing smacking rush of alive that comes with each onslaught of waves.

Then you’re out past the wash and into the relaxing, rolling calm at the back of the break. It’s here that I chill out and wait for a wave to bodysurf. I’m not good at it. Bodysurfing, that is. I grew up around the beach and knowing the surf but never had a body board or a surfboard. I can pick the waves, mostly. But my technique lets me down.

So today I hit the beach. Unsuccessfully I washed through a couple of waves before the big hummer came along. It looked brilliant, a pearler that would get me most of the way back to shore where I could start the whole process over again. Not so. It was a dumper. Unpatrolled beach, no other swimmers around me, and my companions were a couple of hundred metres up the beach taking photos of whatever they found interesting up there.

This wave… It flipped me. One second I was shooting forward on the crest. My arms were out, my head was down and I was a short stocky arrow of a waverider. Next thing… I was upside down. Flipped. Water forced up my nostrils and then BANG! I hit bottom. Actually, I hit hip on bottom. My body was twisted in way that I don’t think I can ever replicate unless I become a gymnast (which would be fantastic for my sex life… Maybe one day). The shock of that opened my mouth, so I received a gutful of salt water as well. I tumbled for a while and then finally I was free. I came up gasping for air, shocked and scared. I’ve discovered my mortality.

There was a point where I would have said So what if I die? I could wade out there and disappear and who cares? Gone. Fish food. But now I’m scared. I don’t want to be the next missing person. If I die… yes, it’s still who cares?, but I want closure for the people I love.