folklore; conrad fisher

18: personal question

PROMPT: Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

When I was eight I was taught how to surf by an old friend of mine. We spent the day learning the basics of the sport. I had little, wobbly knees that weren't built for riding waves, but I was relentless in my pursuit of getting on the board and connecting with the ocean. I didn't know it at the time, but the surfing lessons my friend gave me as a kid would be the greatest gift I'd ever received.

It wasn't something tangible, like the iPads or Barbies other kids my age fawned over, but it was something I'd get to carry with me throughout my life. I don't like to call surfing a skill, nor a hobby. It's neither of those things. It's an escape. What my friend gave me all of those years ago was a way out of the issues troubling me in the real world. The moment I got up on the board, the ocean breeze around me, I was in a different place. It was somewhere beyond land and life as we know it: an unreachable space.

When my parents got divorced, I'd move across the country and not hear from that friend again for years. But what I had of his was the ability to hop onto a surfboard and glide along an ocean wave. Even as I swam across a different ocean, I could still feel a connection to him, and to the beach where I first learned to surf.

At the age of ten I began to watch my mother sink into an intense depression, one that only worsened over time. I thought to myself, if she only knew there was a way out of all of this. That there's a place where nobody could hurt her, where it's just her and the water for miles and miles.

I kept going there, because I needed it. The emptiness, the serenity of it all. Amidst the chaos in my household I could find peace in the feeling of salty ocean water in my tongue after a large wave crashed over me.

Through my years as a surfer I fell in love with the sea. I wanted to immerse myself in all of it, see all of its cracks and crevices. I wished to know everything that lied beneath those waters. Why did the waves move the way they did, and is it true that the moon controlled the tide? I asked the ocean these questions and she responded with a soft hum and short breaths. Every time I felt alone, or afraid, I listened and breathed with her.

My interest in marine science has less to do with currents or kelp or whatnot. I want to explore the ocean because I'm enamored with her. To dedicate my life to uncovering the mysteries of the sea would be to connect with the being I feel closest to.

And I'd always have my friend and his surfboard to thank for that.