On Memory, My Father and Surfing

It was the summer you spent in Torquay before your family moved there for good, the summer before primary school ended and high school days would begin and you would say goodbye, for a long time, to the girl that followed your father around and wanted to do everything that he did. You remember the sweet scent of strawberry surf wax and being allowed to draw big circles of pink with it on his board as he grabbed your hand firmly and showed you how to do it properly, just the right amount of pressure and trying not to drop the block in the sand. Sometimes you would stand in the shallows with him and reach down into the cool water for handfuls of sand to rub into the wax before he would paddle away and leave you looking out into the wide blue and sparkling water, and you would build sandcastles with your cousin and sister and wait for the tide to come in to flood the moat, washing all the majesty of your construction away, with its tunnels collapsing and turrets crumbling into oblivion. When he appeared again on the shore, he would take you into the waves and push you into the water yelling for you to paddle paddle paddle, and your ten year old arms would flail wildly until the momentum would be enough that you could jump to your feet and feel like you were flying, for a moment, before tumbling into the rushing white foam.

You remember wanting take the board down the hill all summer, because you were ready to try on your own, but you knew that he would say no, that it was his board and he didn’t want you to ding it. You remember the days when he would come home from work sullen and tired, stressed from running his business, your mother urging you and your sister to pick up your toys so that home would be nice for him when he got home. You remember how he liked things in their place, the sand swept off feet before going in the car that was bought with hard won wages, the wetsuits carefully placed in buckets in the boot, the no eating rule in the car, the careful sliding of the surfboard into the striped cover and placed gently onto roof racks before starting the drive back to Melbourne for a working week. Even at ten, you knew the lines that could not be crossed – you could not put vinyl on the turntable before your thumb could rest on the centre hole and your fingers on the outer rim so as not to scratch the smooth blackness, you could not ride his bike until your feet could touch the ground, and you could not take his sleeping bag for a sleepover because he did not want it ruined.
That summer, you took the board anyway, whilst he was sleeping under the tea trees in the heat, his straw hat over his face. Your mother doesn’t see you either, busy with sandwiches and your sister who has a splinter between her toes from climbing trees. You manage very well at first, carrying the heavy board down to the sea wall, where there is a four foot drop to the hot sand. For a long moment you wait and look. You look back up to the shade of the trees where your father sleeps, and know he may not wake up for some time. The light sparkles on the water, crescent moons of light on its cool surface, and your small hand firmly grasps the rail as you jump on to the sand, at the same time hearing the crack of fibreglass as the fragile board hits the hard and hot bluestone wall. You feel a shame prickle under your zinc creamed face, realising you’d underestimated the length of the board, and failing to compensate for this meant that as you’d jumped, the end of the board had smashed. You sit crying, running your fingers over the sharp shards of glass and wishing you could leap backwards onto the hill and back into time. You can’t take it in the water now, because the water will ruin the foam, and you can’t get it up the wall without scraping it further. There is nothing left to do but struggle with it along the beach and up the steep stairs and rest it again before your sleeping father. You imagined his anger, his disappointment, and the impossibility of ever asking him to use his board again, waiting for his reprimand. You stay silent later, as he slides the board into the cover as you hold the fabric apart for him, and wonders how he’d done it himself, why he hadn’t noticed it earlier.

Thirty five years later you watch your father paddle out at Point Roadknight, and you follow behind him like you did when you were a child. You are riding his board, because he had sold it to you for a song. You think about how lucky you are that he spent time with you teaching you to surf, and what a precious gift that was. You think of the boards he had lent and given you, the ones shaped by your uncle, the hours he’d spend with you in surf shops choosing just the right one. You notice a ding on the side of his board and ask if he’s noticed yet, and what he did to get it. He doesn’t know, and is frustrated and it’s his third ding that month, and swears it’s time for a new board anyway.

You ask him later, over coffee, if he remembers the time you put the hole in his longboard that summer. He looks at you curiously, and says he can’t remember that at all. He laughs and said he was never that particular about his things, and if I had wanted to get the board onto the sand, all I had to do was ask.