Watching children playing in the waves brings back memories of my own childhood and experiencing the ocean for the first time. My mother had told me stories of her childhood in Southern California- swimming in the ocean and running races on the sand with her family. I think she was trying to show me how to body surf that day, although she never called it that. She didn’t demonstrate (and knowing my mother, she was probably fully dressed at the beach), but she instructed me to put my back to the waves and let them carry me to shore. I followed her instructions, but ended up being knocked over, causing me to somersault through the waves and come up out of the water with a mouthful of sand. That was the end of that lesson! Despite that fiasco, I eventually did learn to body surf when I spent a summer in Hawaii between my sophomore and junior years of college. And I’ve had a lifelong fascination with the ocean, though nowadays it’s as an observer and photographer.
melinda anderson photography 