When waves are scarce, surfers enjoy being with people

It was so cold the other morning that the Captain wore a T-shirt with sleeves instead of a tank top.

“It got down to the mid-60s last night,” he said as he checked the surf from the sea wall and sipped hot coffee from his commuter mug. His commute, since he retired, consists of the two-block walk from his house to the beach.

We gazed out over a flat, gray sea, its surface pocked like cellulite by the onshore wind. In the distance, at the edge of the reef, two sets of skeletal remains — last year’s Christmas trees — stood wired to rusty poles dating back to World War II.

Despite the wintry chill, the seasonal spirit has eluded me amid workday commutes filled with construction detours and seasonal congestion caused by extra trolleys, tour buses and rental cars.

At home, we’ve been under siege by flu and rats. The other night at dinner, I found myself staring at a new, 2-inch hole chewed in the dining room screen. It matches the hole in the window over the kitchen sink.

And I’m sad because the kids aren’t coming home. Now I know how my mom felt all those holidays we stayed in New York. Not that she didn’t have plenty of kids here in Honolulu, but you know how moms are.

Our family had lavish Christmases. Our grandfather, born on a Big Island sugar plantation to an immigrant mother who worshipped a Korean nature goddess, never had a childhood Christmas. Our grandmother, from a big, poor Haleiwa clan, felt grateful to get an orange in her stocking. Growing up on a Wahiawa pineapple plantation, our mother had dogs instead of dolls. They tried to give us children all they’d missed.

Looking back, material gifts mean little compared with family time together — all the stories, food and laughter — but I do cherish a few favorite things.

Most were surprises: a red lacquer, musical jewel box and a horse charm bracelet from my grandparents when I was 8; a forest-green velvet blazer I coveted in college but didn’t ask for, knowing my mom couldn’t afford it — yet somehow, it found its way under the tree.

There was the soft, pale-yellow pointelle sweater my young husband gave me before he realized I was allergic to angora, and the bodysurfer and surfboard vermeil bangles my brother made in arts college. This holiday, I look forward to rereading “The Plot Against America,” Philip Roth’s “what if” novel about living under Nazism in New Jersey, a gift my son bought me for Christmas 2004.

And if you can swing it, the best surprise gift for a South Shore surfer would be a set of off-season winter waves.

NEW to our neighborhood this year are a big white snowperson in a top hat and grass skirt on one lawn, and an even bigger white bear in a Santa hat on the rooftop across the street. They join the coconut trees wrapped in lights and the colored lights flashing in the picture windows of the high-rise condos that erased our former night view of real stars glowing above the black sea.

Yet last weekend, a friend came by for a toast and exclaimed at the beauty of our view as the sun went down in a narrow chute of sky between the condos.

Next evening, just before sunset on a drizzly Sunday spent indoors, Don laid up with the flu and I with seasonal affective disorder or whatever, my artist brother showed up with his surfboard and a wild look in his eyes. He needed to get in the water. So, I realized, did I.

We went. It was freezing. It was flat. Yet we returned from our immersions happy and refreshed, my brother lingering on the front porch to chat about nothing in particular with Don through the screen door, leaving a big puddle in his wake.

And now it’s time to put out cookies for Santa and whatever else might be stirring, and wish comfort and joy to all of you.

“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.