Sally Huggins Toner

I thought my surfing days were behind me.

Not that they ever really existed in the first place. I’ve always been too uncoordinated, maybe a little scared. I know the ocean, though. I lived right next to it from birth until almost 14—spent my summers being tossed by waves, swallowing sand, rubbing the hard-packed stuff into jellyfish stings and spraying Solarcaine on my back so I could sleep at night. My first bee sting was at the beach, my first kiss, my first…We’ll stop there.

For the past four years, my extended family has vacationed in the same house next to Fish Head’s Pier in South Nags Head. The family tradition of meeting at the Outer Banks actually began over two decades ago, starting in Corolla, the furthest spot on Rt 12, and moving down the entire length of the barrier islands to Hatteras and back again. I first visited Nags Head four decades ago, when family friends picked me up in Norfolk on their way down to their own extended family reunion. Or rather, they stopped to visit us for a couple of days, and my parents most likely pleaded with them to let me tag along. My mom’s friend Beverly is a saint.

The Outer Banks in 1980 was still pretty remote—old school beach bungalows with shutter windows and screened in porches so close to the surf I’m certain they’ve fallen in by now.  No TV, just jigsaw puzzles and two windows in the front where we could watch the storms circle and slam in. I remember scanning the horizon for another hurricane wave like the one in the photo at that restaurant where I ate fried shrimp po boys. Beverly had three children, and the oldest, Maggie, was my age. We spent the week inseparable, boogie boarding, catching flounder from the shore, walking down to the pier for Ms. Pacman, Centipede, and ice cream. I went to Jockey’s Ridge (a later college beach week meet up spot) for the first time, rolled down the giant dunes. I shook sand out of my pockets for weeks.

It. Was. Glorious.

I read recently that these barrier islands have moved 15 to 40 miles west since the Ice Age. Coast, carved from one side, is supposed to be replaced on the other. The newest bridge to Hatteras is built about 100 yards over from the last—curved differently, engineered higher, more aerodynamic, as the older inferior technology is dismantled, bit by bit, section by section.

I suppose that is what happens to memory. It is imperfect, structurally unsound. So we put up the red cones and bring in the cranes to deconstruct, reconstruct, our family history—our individual history. It’s the only way to move forward. We are barrier islands. Our sands must shift.

I never learned to surf. My sisters have friends and former boyfriends for whom it is an obsession. One of them tried to teach me years ago, and I managed to sprain my toe jumping up on the board before I gave up and rode the wave in on my stomach. One sister’s boyfriend subscribed to surfing magazines, and, for a while, I read them all cover to cover, fascinated with the language, the photos, the idea of that hollow wail you hear in the tube. It’s a sound I experienced while boogie boarding in LA (after getting thrown upside down, sideways, every which way multiple times. The Atlantic and Pacific are completely different beasts.)

The ocean at the Outer Banks is capricious in temperature and roughness, but, this year, it was fantastic. I boogie boarded again, even rode a paddle board to shore. The waves were that perfect kind—not mushy, long, rolling, crumbling and gently pushing at the very end. I considered, once again, attempting to surf for real.

I’ve been through some stuff since the last time I tried. I’ve begun to build a new bridge—higher, more aerodynamic—and I’m dismantling, bit by bit, section by section, parts of the old one I don’t want to keep.

I know from two years of some pretty serious yoga that balance, a key component of surfing, is a fluid thing. You must keep your core strong and never lock your knees.  I think I can do that. Who knows? Maybe there’s time yet for me to be a 50-year-old “grom.” (That’s surfing lingo for newbie.)

There are adventures ahead. I just need to be willing to shift.

*The pictures I’m attaching are Aimee at sunrise in the Atlantic and a surfer at dusk in Ocean Beach—the Pacific—a completely different beast.