I wandered over to the water, passing shells planted on their faces, bits of driftwood, dirty feathers half-buried in the sand. The sky arched in a flawless blue dome above me, curving down in front of me to met the water at the horizon far away. Gulls winged their way down the beach, searching for handouts and mischief.

I let the inflatable dolphin drag behind me when I reached the water, its tail punctuating the rippling brown depths of the silty water, my feet making little clouds where I kicked up the sand. My dolphin had some spots on its face from where a can of stain had dropped and a small puncture that I couldn’t locate, but I loved it as much as I loved it the first time I went wave-riding on it, when its face was still clean blue plastic, the puncture wasn’t there, and the valve where you blew it up wasn’t full of sand. 

When I reached a nice sand bar I mounted, my feet dragging on the sand, the water up my thighs straddling the dolphin, my hands on the convenient handles as the water rose about me and subsided in rhythmic swells. With each ripple I was pushed closer to the land, until my journey up the wave grew longer, and my journey down became a sharp drop as the water, forgetting me in the distractions of making a wave, let me go. I knew I had found the right place, so I dropped anchor, put my feet on the ground, looked behind me, and prepared for launch. When a lovely wave rose behind me and crept towards me with steady force, I faced forward again and felt the water around me leave to assist the cresting of my wave, its dignified bulk growing, ripe and expectant. When it finally crashed around me I was in the middle of it, already in motion, head forward, feet up once more, my hands tight around my dolphin. 

I thundered towards land as the wave bore me along, and I felt the water beneath me streaking past, while the white foam on the surface bubbled around me. We went for quite a while before the wave became too small to carry me anymore, and I got up and watched my wave, quite a bit smaller but just as cheerful, laughing as it pulled towards shore in a cluster of white bubbles. 

 

I emptied the water from my pants and pulled them back up. My dad made me these pants made from a fabric designed to get wet, but he sewed the pockets so well that they collected water and pulled the waistband down. I got back on my dolphin and pushed myself back to where the waves were calling me. And I became one of them, coming and going, swelling and lowering, as I once again traveled with them back to shore.