Thinking Back on Waves and Moments in Time

Looking back on nineteen years of surfing, I can isolate specific spots with specific friends and friend groups, and, ultimately, with specific times of my life. Changing interests, changing schools, changing methods of transportation, are all mirrored by my time at different lineups scattered across O‘ahu. If you were to ask me about any conscious moment of my life, I could tell you the waves I was surfing, and who in the water I was with. 

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about this. Maybe I’m grazing the edge of a quarter-life crisis. Maybe it’s just being back at my childhood home for so long. But surges of nostalgia have been building like a rising swell and I’m not totally sure what to do with all of these memories and feelings. For almost every friend made, I’ve had one that has fizzled out. And these relationships are deeply tied to the waves that we grew up sharing. Revisiting these lineups has been an unexpected challenge and I often find myself leaving the water with a melancholic, homesick feeling. 

Just yesterday I paddled out to an even session at Wailupe. It had been nearly fifteen years since I first surfed that spot. I’ll never forget those after-school afternoons at the Cote’s house at Wailupe Circle. After sneaking into the candy drawer for a much needed sugar rush, we would head to the back of the house to pick out random boards from the family’s quiver. Dane, Pierce, Liam, Wyatt and I were kookiest little groms and the excitement that I felt in those early days of surfing is indescribable. Through surfing every day together, we learned what friendship was at core level. We shared waves, and pranks, and Icees doused with Li Hing Mui powder. As a nine year old kid, the world is so big that it’s small, and your friends are absolutely everything. 

As we got older we started surfing Kewalos, and then Kaisers, and then Ala Moana Bowls. The south shore was a newfound playground of hollow rights and rippable lefts. It opened us up to a whole new surf community and a whole new set of pre-teen surfer friends. On the edge of middle school and alongside the widespread adoption of the cell phone, independence felt more important than ever. I wouldn’t be home for entire weekends, bouncing from friend’s house to friend’s house, and picking off inside waves from uncles in between.

I check the cams at Bowls just about every day, although I’ve yet to paddle out this summer. It’s always packed beyond belief, but just as hollow, yet playful as I remember. It’s hard to think back without laughing at our squad of five or six, hopping out of the van and paddling out together into one of the most localized lineups in the world. We were clueless, rowdy kids with just about one thing on our minds: “Was Dane’s mom gonna my best wave on camera?”

Makapu‘u, a boogie and body surfing beach on the east-south-east corner of the island, started pulling me into its grasp as I moved on to high school. Makapu’u was the balance of tranquility and power. Steep cliffs, white sand. Clear blue water, slabby double up closeouts. Every Sunday morning I’d drive Makapu’u with my dad and brother and meet up with Wyatt and his dad and his brother. It felt a bit like church. It may as well have been. I repented sloppy high school hangovers and mourned two-week-crush heartbreaks in that shorebreak. No matter how I felt, or what I did the night before, I could be found bodysurfing with my friends and my family come Sunday morning at Makapu‘u. I can’t drive by that breathtaking beach without thinking of all the glory and all embarrassment of life as a confused teenager. 

In the summer before leaving for college, I spent most of my time, alongside my closest buddies from school, in my family house at Ma‘ili Point on the westside of O‘ahu. We shared beers and bonfires and sunset surf sessions that made the summer feel like something out of a Corona Light commercial. I remember thinking that this was as good as it would ever get. And in some ways it was, in others it definitely wasn’t.

But despite the perfection that surrounds me out here, it’s difficult not to wonder about the future. Fear and uncertainty was a constant reminder not to take those moments, or friends, for granted. Surfing out here today, with the sun cut into pieces by clouds and horizon, I feel just as fulfilled, anxious, vulnerable, and excited as before. 

With so many surfers, at so many different stages of their lives, every new connection made in the water is a miracle. The fact that waves– surf spots, can hold us together so tightly, for a few weeks, months, or even years, is extraordinary. We are just passengers through time, but waves might just be a window back. These few months at home have brought an onslaught of memories. I have some old buddies that I should probably call. 

This one goes out to all the friends I’ve made, and all the ones with whom I have slowly and unknowingly drifted apart.