POLING: There be giants among us
“Dad, wait up. You’re like a giant out here, and I’m just tryin’ to keep my head above water.”
The boy bobbed in the surf, several yards out from the beach. A plucky 9-year-old hopping, water up to his chest. His father was out a few yards further, where the sand had risen higher again. The water broke around his father’s knees.
“No,” the man said, turning to walk back to his son, “I’m not a giant out here. Nothing is a giant in the ocean, not even the whales.”
“Well, you’re a lot bigger than me. So, you’re giant enough,” the boy said as his father reached out for his hand. The man lifted his son from the water, carrying him to the place where the beach was further away, but the sand rose higher still, where the water splashed around the boy’s waist.
Waves broke a few more feet out and the man and boy walked, hand in hand, quietly to the spot. Together, they kneeled down in the ocean, their heads on the same level above water, looking over their shoulders to watch for the waves.
“See the lifeguard chair,” the man said, pointing to where the rest of the family sat with their suntan lotion, towels, chairs, shoes and clothes. “If you come up on the other side of the chair, work your way back over to this side of it. That way we won’t lose them.”
“OK,” the boy said, turning his head back to the waves. “Dad, Dad, here comes one.”
“Looks like a good one,” the man said.
The ocean swelled, holding for a second as if it were trapped in a balloon. It rose behind their heads, where the man and boy knelt in the water and sand.
“Get ready,” the man yelled. “Kick off and ride.”
The bubble popped. The wave broke. Man and boy kicked off of the sand, sending their bodies straight and horizontal, shooting along with the current of the wave. The water spun the man, crumpling his body despite his efforts to keep straight, toppling him, head over heels. He felt air on his feet as his head submerged. His shoulder scraped the sand floor. He spun. Ocean covered his feet and the rest of him. Water pushed him onto his side. He dug his fingers into the sand. The wave’s strength ebbed and the water rolled into the calmer surf of the sea.
The man stood, shaky, on the ocean’s moving sand floor. He wiped the hair and salt from his eyes, laughing. The boy was already on his feet, smiling, splashing in the water.
“How was it?” the man yelled.
“It was good,” the boy answered, swim-running to the spot where the waves broke. “Here comes another one.”
“Let it go,” the man said. “Look at the chair. We got knocked past it. Let’s move back over. See if we can swim over the waves.”
Together, they moved over to the right side of the chair. They rode a few more waves before the boy decided to return to the beach, to the chairs and the towels.
The man watched the boy’s progress. He stood in the ocean, water up to his chest. He watched the boy become smaller. The boy walked and swam into shore until he was a small dot walking on the beach to the chairs.
Waves crashed around the man’s shoulders and head. Salt water poured over his eyes into his ears. It was a peaceful crashing. Standing there, feeling the sun and wind on his face, arms and shoulders, feeling ocean wrapping around his stomach and legs, feeling the grit of the moving sand between his toes.
Funny how the ocean, on a bright, sunny day, can make one feel so small, yet, large at the same time.
The uncertainties that swim under its murky depths, the power of it coursing in and out, yet the gentle ways it can soothe you just by being immersed in its waters. You are part of it, a part of something bigger than yourself. Big enough that it can make even a giant seem small, so immense that it can make even a poor man feel gigantic.
The man watched the water flow, felt it move him as he stood there, making no effort to stop the movement. He was on the other side of the lifeguard’s tall chair, without trying or resisting.
He scanned the beach full of people. He spotted the small dot of the boy, his boy, playing at the edge of the water on the beach. He saw more of his family on the beach by the chairs and towels. They all looked very small from where he stood in the ocean, just flesh-colored dots in swimsuits.
They made him feel small and large at once. He worried about them; some time, every day or night, beyond his control, for a few minutes, he worried about his family and these moments scared him and made him feel small in the face of the world and all of the unknown things that could happen.
He wanted his wife and children to be safe and happy.
At other times, during the day, he would look at them, or think of them, and he would feel so large, so lucky to be a part of something immense and wonderful, that it left him speechless and he could only express it by singing or dancing.
He would feel like a giant in these moments. Their giant. The boy’s giant, at least for a few more years, until the boy became a man and would one day be a giant to a little child of his own.
The man thought of these things as he watched the little dot that was his son playing on the beach. The man gritted his toes into the sand. He walked toward this important dot, letting the waves break on him. The waves staggered the man, but did not knock him down. The current pulled at him but did not stop him.
He walked through the surf until the dot became a boy again, until the boy grew larger and larger in the man’s eyes, until the man stood beside his son, and the boy smiled.
“Hey, Dad,” the boy said.
The man bent down to say hello to a giant in his life.
Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.
