Balancing from moment to moment, hour to hour, day and night, I’m now onto the rolling wave trains, disemboguing noise and salty foam. Deafened by the internal–external clamor and blinded by the mid-afternoon golden light, on the initial camel-like motion at a fast-forward pace, I scuffle to remain steady on my ten toes, ineptly holding on to the surfboard.
Goggling at a towering wave dashing in, I recall what you said, no say, with a trained niftiest bodily precision while venturing such erratic depths of water, “It’s all about balance, you see. Stare hard at fate and it’ll bow down just like the unruly wave.” You know, I’m not the brave kind, and it’s about holding on to our ten, whether on a surfboard or in life.
Swells swinging, with the welter of surface spume—churning white as if a baby playing with soap bubbles—pushes me high up in the air. I ride along, swaying in the rhythm, while a stampede of emotions wrecks my heart. What a kaleidoscopic life we had—settled in our twenties after getting our degrees, a fat salary, yearly vacations when we went surfing, your favorite sport; a few months into the next year, and we were to welcome our first baby. How we discussed you’d be a runaway mother, and I’d be the ever-admiring father. With unstable ten and abrupt trickery by the surf’s cyclical motion when billowed by the wind, increasing in volume and speed, I’m run over by water. A fall from the very crest of the upwelling. Going through a moment of unendurable suffocation. Surface air is unreachable, perhaps forever. No matter how high we rise, plummeting is inevitable. Soared, hurtled, tarried, grazed, crashed—whether it’s the sea wave or your dream plane.
I can’t forget the day when you were going on an assignment for a few days. Your first assignment in a foreign land. How excited you were. The last thing I remember is your smiling face before you disappeared into the airport corridor. What was wrong with your plane? The question I’ve asked time and again without any response.
Cold darkness whelms me, silencing the outer roar. I keep sliding down, my inside puffing up with water. A depressing descent, like losing someone you love forever. In the next moment, another wave hits me. I resurface. Gasping wildly for air, I notice a lady in a red swimsuit—so long unseen—surfing with me in the lonely sea, wearing your smile on her face. Life leaves no space for vacuums. Your words reverberate within me, and for the first time, I meditate on your words—“this sport will keep us together; we’ll learn to make up when we fight; to love again when boredom finds a pocket in our hearts.”
She keeps smiling, her gentle eyes fixed on me, eager for recognition. A sudden swiftness of the sea is now in my heels, firm and sure ten, wheeling on the newly found surge.
12/10/2025
12:44:12 PM