My son and I spent this past weekend at Myrtle Beach.
On our first afternoon there, our trip to the beach coincided right with the incoming tide, so the surf had some big waves crashing in.
After watching me swim out beyond the breakers to float over the incoming waves, my son wanted to join me, in which request I happily obliged him. Decked out in his swimmies, he held onto my arms as we made our way through the surf to the calmer waters just beyond.
As we floated around out there, we'd occasionally catch a wave awkwardly or a larger one would come in and break earlier. We'd get splashed pretty good or dunked a little by the crest of the wave, but it was nothing major ... until THE wave.
Have you ever had one of those moments when you saw something bad coming and just couldn't do anything about it? That blink of an eye just before a car crash? The mug teetering on the edge of the counter just before falling? The false step or little stumble at the top of the stairs that sends a kid careening down them? (I know that last one a little too personally.)
That's what it felt like as I saw this wave coming toward us. It was huge (huge by South Carolina standards anyway) and was clearly going to break right on top of us. I grabbed my son, told him to hold his breath and tried to lift him up as high as I could above the wave just as it crashed onto my head, pounding me into the sand and ripping my son from my arms.
After being tumbled around pretty fiercely by the wave, I dug in my feet and stood up as quickly as I possibly could in the retreating surf and immediately looked around for my son, who should have been bobbing close by thanks to his floaties. I can't possibly describe the sinking sensation in my gut, the instant sense of panic that flooded my every cell, when he wasn't anywhere in sight.
I screamed his name and heard my friend call from the shore, "He's beside you." Just then, my son did surface about four feet away from me, spitting and coughing out the sea water but generally unharmed. (My friend said he saw the whole thing from the shore and, from his vantage point, could see my son just below the water's surface when I couldn't.)
Do you know how frustrating it is to try to run through water that's up to your waist? It seemed to take forever to get to my son and get him into my arms, though in reality only a few seconds had surely passed.
I picked him up and headed for the shore, spitting and coughing myself the whole way. We were both fine, but I had had enough of the ocean for the afternoon with that episode.
But here's what gets me -- my son indulged in being held and petted and checked over for a few minutes. He "wow"ed with me over what a doozy that wave was and sat down on the beach -- for a grand total of about 3.7 seconds. And then he was up and headed back to the waves again to splash and play, completely undaunted by the experience that left my adrenaline surging and my heart pumping.
Of course, I should admit that I'm guilty of the same offense in a more protracted form. We did the exact same thing the next day. Again, incoming tide, high surf, battering waves. Again, swim out past the breakers and float over the waves. Again, giant wave slams into us, pounding water into our ears and noses and our bodies into the sand.
The second time, though, might have been even worse. Remembering what happened the last time, I braced myself better and managed to hold onto my son that time. It spared me the panic of the previous day, but because I held onto him, I couldn't stand up easily and we were blasted by a second wave that came right on the heels of the first.
We were really tumbled around under the swirling water pretty fiercely before I could get my footing and get us out of there. I swallowed so much water that I was nauseated for a while, and I had saltwater running out of my nose for 10 minutes as it tried to unflood my sinuses. (I know y'all were eager to learn that.)
But, again, my son proved himself utterly fearless and returned to play in the surf long before I had recovered from the tumble. Some kids are just unstoppable. Seems I got one of them.
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