The Fourth Day

Happy Birthday Andy! January 30, 2010...

I was trying to be so quiet this morning, thinking they were all still asleep. Then I noticed the sliding glass door was open, and Andy was sitting on the porch, watching the full moon dropping into the sea. I whispered, "Happy birthday!" Andy got his wish. We were on our way to surf.

We ended up at Domes, where I got one of the best waves of the trip so far. The crowd was light. The waves were fun, shoulder to head high, glassy and blue. It was one of the bigger ones. I saw it looming up outside, and no one else seemed to notice. I stroked outside, popped my board, and off I went, cutback, cutback, cutback, off the tops, all the way to the inside. I was stoked! Andy had a big smile when I paddled back out. I could not stop giggling. We were at a happy place. Little did we know what was coming. This is why you have to grab these moments when they arrive, and hold on tight, because you can't stay there forever - no matter how hard you try.

A young drunk Puerto Rican guy asked me, "Lady! Lady! What time is it (tapping at the place where a watch might be). I told him it was 8:15 am. He thanked me and hung his head. He had been paddling for that wave of the day I had just caught, and when he had seen me he had stopped, luckily. In his condition he could have just taken off, and things might have been quite different. Suddenly I heard someone calling my name. It was some guy from St. Augustine! He lived on A-street, an older guy I recognized, but I couldn't remember his name. Andy knew him. We all talked awhile. He had just arrived. Soon it began to get really crowded, so we decided to head in for breakfast.

We made a trip to see the caverns, which was an amazing thing to see. The afternoon light filtering down through the opening overhead was spectacular. The massiveness of it, so vast, was astounding. The silence inside felt like a cathedral. Thinking about how many millions of years it has existed made you feel so small and insignificant. We are only here for an instant, the blinking of an eye.

On the way back, it tickled us all to no end to see so many pick-up trucks with horses in the back, looking out at the world, the wind blowing through their manes like dogs!

Our pals, the U.S. government, opened the present I brought Andy for his birthday. Security! They left me a note at the bottom of my luggage, amid the ripped wrapping paper. Deb gave me some masking tape, and I tried to salvage it. But, the worst thing happened tonight. He never even opened it.

Their cat was killed today.

Andy had gone to the top of the hill to call his mom, and someone had given him the news. Everything changed within an instant. The sadness was all encompassing, and the night turned black. He came back to tell Deb first, then Ryan went in to see what that sound was. It was the sound of weeping. Everything despairing I had ever experienced came racing back to me, as I stood outside their door.

The next day was grey, overcast. The waves disappeared. It felt like the entire world had turned bleak.