The Wedge 1

April 2004

I don’t know why I decided last week to bodysurf the Wedge again after all these years. The last time I was out at that spot was with my sons, Matt and Jeff, before time, distance and commitments took them from me forever. We went out together for the last time in 1992, the summer after Matthew graduated from the Naval Academy. Jeff, a 1989 graduate, was already married, and had spent four years on the USS Annapolis, a fast attack submarine based in New London, Connecticut. The two of them were living on Coronado Island, Jeff in submarine intelligence, Matt training to be a Navy SEAL. It was a magic year; I could see either of my sons anytime I wanted. 

Anyway, despite the population pressures of in living Orange County, if you get to the beach early enough you can still have the waves to yourself for a little while. 5:30am is early enough and a little while was all I wanted. I walked past the lifeguard tower where only yards away I first held the girl of my dreams who would become my wife. So many things in life have changed, yet the ocean seemed forever. I was taken back to a time when I believed that all things were possible. I was not prepared for the power of the moment.

The April waters were cold, but the waves were rolling in huge and menacing, calling to me from the past. I do not fear the ocean, even now; in my time I could be at one with even the most violent surf. I wish I could say that this was still true, knowing just when to takeoff and when to roll out of a wave, but those days have long gone with the flickering, fading strength and vitality of youth. I am after all, over 60 years old. I tired easily in the cold water, even with the wet suit. After 20 minutes it was clear that I would never get across the break as I once had, but I was hoping the hope of the old, just once more.

I gave it one more try and magically slid down/across the face of a good sized wave as easily as I first did in the summer of 1960. For one frozen moment in time I was in the tube, covered by tons of water but moving through it. Matthew calls it the green room, where time stands still. You can’t flinch or roll under. To experience the green room, you have to have the courage to stay in the wave to the end, even though you know what is coming. Although there is chaos all around you, there is peace and even silence in the tube. If you look down the bottom is rushing up at you, so you don’t look, and time stands still. Although the wave finally closed on me and I hit the bottom pretty hard, that brief and magic moment was worth the consequences.

Shaking it off and gathering my things, I once again traversed the sands of my youth, the images flooding my consciousness, as I day dreamed in still pictures too fast to be savored. There was a time 10 years ago, when it seemed I was losing the memories of that time, because physically I was so far removed from it. I was still able to create it in my mind, to imagine it, but then white smudges would blur the photo, not enough to fully lose the picture, but enough to mar the clarity and the perfection. I feared that time was taking the last of those times that I could cling to, robbing me of the pictures, erasing them while I was powerless to stop it.

I'm sure it's hard for my students to imagine me as an athlete, or someone who had braved waves as tall as buildings, but on this morning I clung fiercely to the moment and the memory. I stood on the edge of the burm, feeling the ocean spray as the waves crashed upon the beach and recalled the last fading light of a magic summer’s day of long ago when still, all things are possible.