Warrior Surf Sunrise
Daybreak at Folly Beach arrived like a secret you suddenly realize everyone else already knows, the horizon splitting into peach and lavender while the pier stretched out its wooden arm to underline the revelation. Addy knelt in the cool gray sand, rubbing wax across her mint green board as if scribbling a love note to the Atlantic, while her stepdad, Tom, scanned the sets with the practiced squint of someone who still remembers every wave that ever carried him.
Surfing is really a dialogue with physics: gravity asks its relentless questions, and balance answers in hurried syllables of muscle and nerve. Board under belly, Addy paddled past the foamy chatter of shore break; Tom followed, a black silhouette gliding through pewter water. Out in the lineup they floated in the hush between sets, that pocket of held breath where even gulls seem to whisper.
The swell they wanted finally shouldered up, brief architecture built from moving water. Addy angled her board, slipped to her feet, and let the ocean’s rolling sentence finish itself beneath her. Tom, waist deep now, steadied his own board but lifted a hand, palm open in invitation. As she flew past, her fingers brushed his in a salt-tanged high five. An intertidal handshake between what has been and what’s still coming. It lasted less than a heartbeat yet felt like proof that tides can braid people together even as they keep tugging them apart.
By the time the sun traded its pastel secrets for noon’s indifferent blue, the important work of the morning was already done. We had seen something better than a perfect ride: a family meeting in the living middle of things, demonstrating that relationships, like waves, are best kept in motion: caught, ridden, released, and then sought again with the patient hope of every new sunrise.
