On a recent Saturday morning out at Suis, Debbie said she hadn’t seen Sammy for a while. On weekend mornings, Sammy is usually a regular at Suis or nearby Sleepys, a deep-water break where he seeks relief from crowds.
“I’m feeling kinda worried,” Debbie said.
“Nah, Sammy surfs other places, too,” Captain Cal said. “He goes to Kaikos, he gets around.”
I agreed with Debbie, though: Sammy’s extended absence was unusual.
Next morning he reappeared, paddling over from Sleepys, making eye contact and shouting “Eh! How you stay?”
He caught a wave and as he rejoined the lineup he said softly, gazing down at the water, “My mother died.”
“Oh, no, Sammy, we’re so sorry!” we chorused. For years, Sammy had ended every session by declaring, “Gotta go in now, go see my mother.” An invalid, she lived with his sister.
“Thanks,” he said. He looked up. “I guess we can finally get some rest, now, ah?” He flashed his usual smile, but his face looked puffy and tired.
Between waves, he sat near Debbie, who’s a teacher, mom to two middle-schoolers and the kind of neighbor who brings over a homemade dinner when you’re too sick to move.
“I hope you no mind, Debbie, I staying by you to try and catch your mana,” Sammy said. “I saw you kick out on that one long left — you surfing good!”
“Aw, I’m not,” Debbie said, but her face brightened. She’d lately been venting frustration with her surfing.
Nine years ago, after my mom died, I paddled out to Suis and Sammy told me he was sorry. He’d heard. I tried to focus on a wavering horizon. “That’s OK. No need talk, Mindy,” he said.
Funny how my brothers and I miss everything about our mom, including the things that embarrassed us. For me, in high school, that was when she’d come down to the sea wall to call me in from surfing. I would see her binoculars flash in the sunset and her frantic waving and pretend I didn’t.
When my brother Ethan was 9 years old, she walked out to the end of the Kuhio Beach wall to call him in from boogieboarding and fell off.
Luckily, she landed in a wave and didn’t strike the reef. Fully clothed, still clutching her purse, she swam to shore and walked, soaking wet, to her car.
Ethan said he never saw her.
We escaped her so easily when we went out in the water.
It wasn’t until I was 50 that I invited Mom to come along with me on a surf outing, this time to Makapuu on a gray, misty day. She sat on the rocks and watched me struggle in the gnarly storm waves. I felt safe with her there.
On days when tall, majestic pillars of mist drift in from the sea in front of the Makapuu Lighthouse cliff, I imagine she is near. Of course, she knew how much I would miss her.
In the past three years, since I became a mother-in-law myself, I find myself missing my husband’s mother, Liz, with an added poignancy. Don used to complain about the embarrassing, bright-hued golf shirts Liz gave him (he’s not a golfer), but on a recent day of hot Kona weather he stayed cool in a Tommy Bahama shirt, the first and only aloha shirt his mom bought him. It’s pure linen in subdued colors and he loves it. She had bought it for him in California shortly after we’d resettled in Hawaii.
“It’s really well-made,” Don said. “I think it was the last time she took me shopping.” For a moment he had the look of an abandoned child.
On Mother’s Day, Oahu’s south shore traditionally receives the season’s first epic swell — the better for surfers to flee our mothers, if we’re lucky enough to still have them.
Last year, it was so big that Suis closed out and Sammy surfed Rice Bowls.
I bumped into him, happy and dazed, on the sea wall. “I didn’t want to come in but I gotta go see my mother.”
He won’t have that reason to paddle in today, but his mom will still be looking out for him.
“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.
