by Anne Giordano

 

Just after sunrise, I slink from our Huntington Beach hotel room while my seventeen-year-old daughter is still asleep. My mind has been whirring for hours, and I need to move.

Outside, it’s raw, overcast. The pewter sky blocks SoCal’s famous sunshine like a drawn shade. In the distance, floodlights illuminate two offshore drilling rigs. They remind me of gigantic Erector sets. Zipping my fleece against the Pacific’s chilly breeze, I head three blocks to the pier.

It’s too early for tourist families to be amblingthe half mile stretch. No one is casting a line over the railing hoping to catch dinner. As I stroll the empty pier, sea spray pricks my cheeks;wind whips hair into my mouth. It tastes salty. I walk to the end where the sole restaurant sits, a red-roofed, glass-walled octagon, like the dot on an exclamation point.

My daughter and I are in Huntington Beach for a few decompress days after visiting colleges. But I feel edgy, not relaxed. An undercurrent of unease ripples through my limbs, dredged up from a visit here four years ago.

At the pier’s end, I sit on a bench. The cold cement bites through my leggings.Down on the beach lifeguard towers await their sharp-eyedoccupants; volleyball nets sway. The only sound is a steady crashing of steel-colored waves. Except for a cluster of seagulls and a runner or two, this place, this hour, belongs to the surfers.

I try to count them all— 25? 30? — bobbing in the water like scattershot corks. A few catch a wave and ride its frothy curl to shore. More jogging in the sand, Pop Art-colored boards tucked under their arms — neon pink, lime green, orange-striped—  unique accessories in a sea of black wetsuits. This is “dawn patrol.” Surfers come like pilgrims, waves beckoning them to the morning service, the mist like a shroud covering their sacred place.

I was last here to bring my teenage son home from a recovery program. He’d been struggling—with school, self-esteem— barely afloat. Within months, he was drowning, caught in a riptide of substances.I still wrestlewith how he sank to such depths, with what I missed or didn’t want to see: depression as bleak as today’s sky. Sometimes the heaviness from knowing I wasn’t vigilant enough, couldn’t rescue him, is suffocating. “What ifs” threaten to pull me under, weighty chain links on an anchor of maternal guilt.

Two surf elders stand talking at the water’s edge. One has a gray goatee, mis-matched fins on his feet. The other is balding, deep crevices etched into his Coppertoned face. A teen with lemon yellow hair struts past. Henodstoward the older men before paddling out.

My son learned to surf while he was here. It was hard, he said. He fell a lot.But he kept at it, and with faithand support, eventually he could stand. 

I grab the railing, pull myself up, and scan the water for the yellow-haired teen; he’s floating on his board facing out toward the horizon, waiting. They’re patient, the surfers, serene. Biding their time, confident another wave will come. And when it does, they find their balance and ride it in. I wonder what that feels like, being so certain, so calm, despite the unknown.

Closing my eyes, I breathe out, unclench my hands, and remind myself: he is better now, my son is better. I repeat those words like a mantra or beads on a rosary.

Above me, sunlight just pierces the hazy scrim as if signaling it’s time to go. My daughter and I fly home today. I turn to walk back, but before leaving, I slowly inhalethe briny air of this place. This place where my son found guidance and solace, a kind of salvation. Where the revenant come in the early hours seeking camaraderie and the rush of a ride but are content believing the ritual itself is enough to shore up a soul before the start of another day.

 

Anne Giordano is a former associate producer at CBS News’ 60 Minutes, and she holds a Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. Her work can be seen in River Teeth Journal: Beautiful Things, Hippocampus Magazine, and Panorama Journal, and her travel writing has been honored with a Silver Solas Award. She lives in Connecticut.