i'll try for u
During the last few days of the tenth month I return. I have not been here for the last 7 months.
I wake up to the blaring sound of weekend early morning radio. The host is discussing the latest price for an antique wooden table once used by the noble lord of godknowswhereverton in the 18th century for the fornication of his maidservant.
With such a pleasant thought I press the green snooze button on my stereo’s remote and doze back to sleep. For the time being at least, that is until my father opens my door and full of excited vindication, “Josh get up, we are going to be late! Ian is going to be here in 15 minutes! What happened to you setting your alarm like I said last night?!” I’d love to tell dad about the adventures of the noble lord, but for the time being I mustn’t be late at all. The return has been 7 months in the waiting and I can’t afford to be late.
I quickly glance over to the clock on the stereo. It reads six am, the green light an almost docile version of the sunlight that is gradually piercing its way through the gap my blind makes with the wall as the sun rises.
Remembering my father’s word I throw off my blanket. I don’t want to dampen my father’s anticipation by stressing him with the thought that we will be late. The floorboards creak beneath my feet and I quickly put on the red shorts and yellow shirt I prepared the night before.
In stark contrast to the rest of my room my red bag is impeccably neat and ordered and everything required is in it, I made sure of this thrice. I grab the usual glass of orange juice and two slices of toast.
Upon hearing the car horn I bolt out the door grabbing the bags as I go, putting on my thongs. We open the boot of the golden station wagon and throw in the many bags dad and I brought with us. As I hop into the backseat I squeeze my legs in behind the driver seat and throw my daypack across the back seat and clip in my seat belt. Ian looks to my dad and then to me a wide grin on his face, “here we go fellas!”, his breakfast of coffee and the crumbs from his toast hanging in the grey whiskers that make up his beard.
At that note Ian removes the handbrake and begins to drive. As usual for an early morning I’m still tired, but find it hard to be coaxed back to sleep. The anticipation is too much as dad and I exchange stories with Ian about our adventures since the last time we saw each other and as usual I’ll say something and my father and Ian seem to have a switched turned on and begin to ramble about the same story that happened to them in the seventies…
Then as my sleep deprivation calls me, I put my ipod headphones in and turn the little silver electronic jukebox on to my favourite tunes and doze to sleep, the constant hum of rubber and asphalt beneath us sings a lullaby to which I doze off too.
An hour and a half I’m woken with the distinctive click of the handbrake resuming its steadfast upright salute to what awaits me at the bottom of the cliff. As I open my eyes and wipe the sleep away, the two older men open the car boot behind me and the smell of the sea breeze that I have been longing for the last few month’s rushes into my nostrils and excites my very core.
Its almost like a narcotic in a sense the feeling I get. The smell of the sea and the wind that pounds my face for the first time each summer is a diversion to the usual sounds of cars and keyboards I’m so used to hearing at home in the city. Its an escape.
So without hesitation I hang my bags on my shoulder and begin to run down the wooden ramp that leads to the clubhouse. From the top of the ramp I can see lots of little men in the same clothing as me tending to the little outboard motor of the inflatable boat they have already loaded onto the trailer towed by the quad bike, or more affectionately know as the grizzly.
As the three of us rush down the ramp, dad’s mate Simon in his usual screech yells out at us his age old catch cry “come on you blokes” and my two older companions laugh to themselves and reply back “steady on!”
As we eventually get the familiar smell of the petrol wafts up my nostrils and the small outboard motor in the test tank roars to life sending the murky black oil infested muck in all directions. But we don’t care. We all love it and live for it.
Twenty minutes later we lay out our towels on the beach and proceed to chat away the rest of the older men start talking in the same tone Ian and dad had done an hour and half ago.
And so do Ty and I. Except we sit on the outside a bit. Well not too much, but a bit. Like we have a title to earn yet we know our place, and by no means am I going to intrude on my father’s newfound sense of freedom given to him each year on the first patrol. Maybe its because my mum and sister aren’t around… I’m not really sure. But all I know is that every summer we return to Portsea invisible weights are released from my father and he becomes a youthful man full of vigour and a zest hardly seen in our normal day to day life.
And so it continues like this for the next few hours, the occasional walker strides past every 20 minutes and then I can’t hold it in much more. The weather is so good and the waves so clean and pristine.
I quickly change into my bright red bathers, the surf club name emblazoned in white on the back, put on top my boardshorts and I stretch my rest vest on. As soon as that’s done I grab my red and yellow quartered patrol cap and in the same motion as running down towards the water with my ungodly large surf fins I grasp at the Velcro leash of the blue bodyboard, the salt from last summer cracking as a tape it around my wrist.
The first wave is indescribable. It was just perfect in everyway. It went forever and I just got that feeling I love from riding waves. Once I’ve caught the wave everything is perfectly silent to me except for the soft beating the fibreglass off the bottom of the board on the face of the wave and the sound the rail of the bodyboard makes as you turn on the crest of the wave. For those short few seconds I am in nirvana. I am in unison with nature. It is just me and her and everything is nothing outside of me the board and the wave. I just don’t seem to care about anything else. They say that when someone orgasms their mind goes blank and forgets everything, that’s what the wave feels like. I am in love with nature more so than any girl.
But then I know its time to leave. I catch the last wave in. It is like saying goodbye to a lover. You know you will see them again. But not yet. Not yet. And it is a puzzle, I feel ecstasy and pain at the same time.
As we throw all our clothes into the bags we brought from home a take one last look from the beach and slowly walk back up the wooden ramp to the golden station wagon. We are all so tired. But it’s a good tired.
As Ian’s handbrake pays its final salute to the sea I put my music back on and go back to sleep, engulfed with my newfound sense of love and the sense of content, the same as a boy receives after his first kiss, the love and content that has been ignited by our return to the beach and I know that this is what I can look forward to every third weekend for the next four and a half months.
Bliss. I can’t wait.