The Wind Comes at Two

The wind in Rio keeps hours. It comes in around two, moves the sand along the top of the beach, and turns the water from glass into something with opinions. Locals plan their day around it without ever saying so. You learn to swim before one and to sit still after three.

Yesterday it came early. A student of mine, fifteen, on a soft-top, was pushed past the point where she could touch the bottom. Her leash had a nick in it that I had noticed that morning and not replaced. That is the sentence I keep turning over.

Reading the Water for Two

When you teach, you stop reading the sea for yourself. You watch the sets through someone else's arms and lungs. I counted four waves, walked the board out to the sandbar, and talked to her the whole time in a voice I did not feel like using, low and boring on purpose, so that she would hear a person and not a problem.

Panic is loud. The only useful answer to it is a boring voice.

She got back to the beach on her own, on her stomach, and lay there breathing. I sat down next to her and we said nothing for a while. Then she asked if she could come back tomorrow. I said yes, and afterwards I went and changed the leash.

What the Body Keeps

That night my shoulders ached in the particular way they do after a rescue, which is not the ache of a long session. There is no pride in it. It is closer to being reminded that the sea has no interest in how good you are.

The sea owes me nothing. I like that more than I can explain.

I am twenty-two. I have been teaching for five years and I still make the small mistakes — a leash, a fin, a glance at the sky I skipped because I was talking. The water forgives nothing and charges nothing. It keeps its own hours, and expects you to keep yours.