MY ASCENDANT DESCENDANT

 

Rumour of a wave. So I head down to the bay, it's 2 foot and clean, no wind, dropping tide.

It's a warm night and a hazy sun gives off a dull beige glow. Not the sparkling Hollywood glitter of the previous evening, but the waves are better. I paddle out in the rivermouth rip at the north end and catch a couple of lefts.

I see my son further down the beach on the middle peak. As usual he is catching plenty of waves. I paddle over to greet him. We chat, remarking that it seems relatively quiet given that this is the first reasonable swell in over a month and it's a Friday night. Maybe everyone just headed straight to the pub after work.

My surfing ability has taken a deep dive over the last year coinciding neatly with Cealan's elevated skill levels. As I get older and slower, he grows in confidence and has rapidly overtaken me in terms of how well he now surfs. He is already better than I ever was.

I used to have a personal rule that dictated I had to catch a 3 wave minimum every session. Not an ambitious quota but one I could achieve quite comfortably, indeed sometimes hitting up to 30 waves on my better days. Nowadays I'll settle for a flipped version of that rule where I aim for a 3 wave maximum - and I'll admit that there have been a few sessions where I've struggled to hit that number.

Anyway, I had four good ones under my belt so I decide to catch one in and head home. Low tide now, so I walk back across the beach and climb the rocks up the cliff.

Once up on the cliff I turn and gaze back out to sea. I always pause like this apres-surf, taking a mental picture of the scene for the memory bank. I see lines approaching and watch as a set bulges up on the peak and I instantly recognise my son's silhouette stroking into the first wave. He swoops left, cross-steps to the nose, steps back, pirouettes a swift 360 (his signature move) and walks back up the board. It's a classic 'Cealan' ride. As he stalls on the tail to flick his board up and out of the whitewater he simultaneously looks up at the cliff, raises his arm and gives me a wave goodbye.

Eyes like a hawk, that kid.