When our son texted from New York that he and his wife were flying out for Thanksgiving, Don and I were overjoyed.
That gave way to worry when Rory added, “I’ve been checking the swell forecasts and it looks like I’ll get some good-size bodysurf.”
That was putting it mildly. The north and east shores were well above advisory wave heights and predicted to stay that way.
Rory, 31, is a son of the ocean. He caught his first wave at Bellows at age 3 and takes off on virtually anything — the bigger and steeper the better — shrugging off wipeouts and barrels alike with a happy laugh. But he hadn’t been in Hawaiian waves since the end of June.
Three days before their flight, he called to say he’d pulled muscles in his neck and back and could barely move for the stiffness and pain. Worse was the mental anguish at the probability he wouldn’t be able to bodysurf during the eight precious days on Oahu he’d been looking forward to for so long.
On his and wife Kaitlin’s first day back, we watched Makapuu crank out hollow, sucking tubes with 12-foot faces.
“I’ll just go in and test it out,” Rory said, although his neck and upper back were visibly swollen and he couldn’t turn his head.
“No!” we cried.
Before he could put on his fins, a big black cloud swept over the beach, pelting us with cold rain and churning the waves out of shape. As we left the beach, Rory asked another young bodysurfer how it was.
“Awesome. One of the best days all year,” the guy said. He glanced at our unused fins and pointed at a black-and-yellow pair. “Where’d you get the Vipes?”
“Oh, those are my mom’s,” Rory said.
“All right! They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”
As we drove away, Rory grumbled, “I should have gone in. He said it was the best day all year!”
“One of the best days,” we corrected.
We swam at Bellows, where Rory admitted that the tiny shorebreak tubes hurt his neck and shoulder.
HE’D GOTTEN spoiled. Last year, when Rory and Kaitlin lived in Honolulu, was atypically sunny and dry. They didn’t have to stay out of brown, polluted ocean waters after big rains. Nothing like the the 40-plus days and nights of rain in 2006, when Honolulu’s antiquated sewer pipes burst and country cesspools overflowed, spewing raw waste into the ocean. Every beach on Oahu was closed. You couldn’t even take a walk outdoors in the relentless deluge, much less take the gorgeous Kuliouou hike, which they did this trip in lieu of surfing.
On their last day, Rory wanted to check Makapuu despite the surf report’s pronouncement that it was not only disorganized but “disoriented.”
It was storm surf, with 30 mph winds whipping up whitecaps and riptides. There were only three bodyboarders out. “No swimming” signs fenced the high-water mark.
Our son turned to us with a gleam in his eye.
“The lifeguards let me bodysurf last year when the beach was closed.”
What could we say? He’d caught that attitude from us in our younger days.
He grinned.
“But I’m not going in. It’s junk.”
The four of us sat on a picnic table at the top of the hill, overlooking the great blue bay, and Don and I reminisced about our own brief visits when we lived in New York, driving all around the island and finding no rideable waves.
“It’s a mess,” I said as whitewater lashed the wet black cliffs and whorled in tidepools. “But it’s beautiful.”
“It is beautiful,” Rory said, and our spirits soared above the wild, chaotic sea.
Wildness is precious and vanishing fast, we reflected from our high vantage. Soon we’ll have waves at the push of a button. The week before Thanksgiving, the World Surf League announced that the wave pool at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch in California’s Central Valley will be added to the 2018 championship tour.
“And Disney will build the Jaws pool,” Don predicted, referring to the monster Maui break.
“I’m up for that,” Rory said.
“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.
