“This great and wide sea,
In which are innumerable teeming things,
Living things both small and great.”
– Psalm 104:25
A Sunday afternoon, mid-July at the beach ... the tail-end of a two-day vacation. The world’s most wonderful wife was prodding the sprawling strands for flickering shells, indulging her husband’s impulse to fling himself into the roiling waves for awhile before the long drive home.
Out where the action was, I was trying to re-master the too-long-neglected art of body surfing, along with a half-dozen or so strangers of sundry sizes, shapes, ages, and genders. Among them, up to his neck and paddling hard, was a small boy. His lips were set with a grim determination … locked in the kind of intensity that only a child having fun can muster.
He splashed his way, and I splashed mine. An hour later – battered, sanded, and (though I didn’t yet realize it) fried, I was watching the sun bend west and patiently awaiting the next big tsunami when a voice off to my left chirped: “I know who you are! You were here when I first came out!”
The boy, again, still up to his neck. Battered, sanded, brown – and grinning ear to ear.
“I’m Bryan,” he said, as if that was just about the best thing in the whole wide, wet world to be, and as if I was privileged, indeed, to be in on the information.
“I’m Chris,” I said, glancing at him between waves. He looked to be about eight or nine.
“Can you float on your back like this?” he asked, demonstrating effortlessly. From his tone, I took it Nirvana was only a good backstroke away.
“Yeahhh,” I said, in a kind of Andy Griffith drawl – careful not to mar my affirmation with a demonstration.
We bobbed on our toes in the swelling sea.
“Try to catch the double waves,” he suggested. “They’re the best.”
“Ummhmmm,” I said, agreeably, wondering what a “double wave” was.
A few minutes, and I think maybe a couple of double waves later, we found ourselves on our knees, in the shallows. He half-staggered up beside me as we waded back toward the open sea.
“This time,” he said, as an especially good wave rolled up above us, “let’s dive into it, ‘stead of ridin’ on it.” We dove, let Neptune’s fists pound us about the head and shoulders a bit, came up sputtering and spinning.
“Bryan! Wait for me!” called a girl of about his age and brownness, paddling furiously out toward us on a boogie board.
“Leave me alone!” he yelled, turning his back on her. “Sisters!” he grunted, one eye cocked knowingly toward me. It was a plea for understanding, and, being a brother, I understood.
We paddled, floated, chatted. He told me about his family, their house. Where they were staying on the island. What they did at Sea World. How much money his dad made. Where are your parents? I wondered, as an hour rolled by. Who leaves their child out with a stranger this long?
“You know,” he said, a few moments later, “you’re pretty neat for a grown-up.”
My sunburn turned a little redder. I had some idea how much a compliment like that was worth.
“Well, thank you, Bryan.”
“Most grown-ups are always just a-nippin’ and a-pickin’,” he said, sounding a lot like Andy Griffith himself. He was looking out toward the sea. I looked out that way, too … listening to the sounds of the ocean’s breathing, the cackling of seagulls and pelicans.
“Well … I try not to nip or pick if I can help it,” I said, after a while. A butterfly caught my eye, fluttering bravely out past us toward the deepening swells. A huge wave – the biggest of the afternoon – began to rumble up ahead.
I stood there, swaying gently in the billows, awash in the salt and spray and the wild tang of the sea … gazing out on that wide, wet piece of eternity. And in that moment – in the trough between waves of daydream and reflection, the Matterhorn-high crest climbing, climbing up just ahead …
... I heard the little boy’s voice, quiet, behind me.
“Do you consider yourself a happy man?”
There wasn’t time to look back.
“I think so,” I said, over my shoulder.
“Me, too,” he said – and we fell under the thundering cascade of sea and foam.
The wave hurtled me like a spinning torpedo back toward the beach. The surf flung me, finally, up on the sand, where my whirling vision swung slowly into focus on my wife’s beckoning smile, telling me that indulgence had reached its end. Still, I lay there for a minute, wondering … had he been agreeing with me, or deciding something for himself?
The lines of an old hymn swirled through my water-clogged head.
“Then the Master of the sea
Heard my despairing cry …”
Twilight was softening the sky. A few dozen yards away, Bryan was pushing himself to his feet.
I’ve thought of him so often, over the last decade or two. There must be so many like him. Wading out into the great, surging sea, daring the waves … hoping, groping for action, for consolation, for a companion, maybe. For some kind of certainty.
Too many never get out of the shallows. Struggling against a hundred nagging undertows, all they ever taste is the bitter, burning brine that leaves them thirsty, amid more water than they’ve ever seen.
They know there’s more than the safety of the shore – something wonderful and adventurous and … eternal, out beyond those icy, boiling waters. They look around for someone who’s found it … someone plunging through the same endless waves … someone looking toward that far horizon with a different gleam in his eye.
Staggering out of the water, I hollered a smiling goodbye and padded off to join my wife. For a few moments, we watched Bryan splashing about in the shallows … alone, now. ‘Til he could find another stranger.
The hymn kept swishing around in my head.
“He’s the Master of the sea
Billows His will obey
He your Savior wants to be …”
He surfaced after another wave, and looked back. I waved ‘til he did, and turned toward home.
I never had told him why I’m happy.
When I looked back, one last time, he was pushing out into the breakers again. The waves, I saw, were getting higher.
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