Diving with Dad

 

We ramble along unmarked 4WD dirt roads in my father’s silver Ford Bronco as we make our way to the Kohala coast. I’m 13 and bad with directions. My father knows exactly where we are going as our tires kick up the dirt leaving clouds in our wake. My father knows these roads like the lines on his hands. “Rambling Man” by The Allman Brothers Band is appropriately playing as the Bronco leans and lurches down rocky drops and steep slopes. My dad drives deftly, cutting corners and bouncing over bumps, a childlike grin on his face. I grip the arm rest and brace myself. He laughs and accelerates, dust spewing behind us. He enjoys giving me a fright, he was always playful like that. I give him a look and he slows down. Still, I hang on like it’s the ride of my life because it is. I’m with my father, just the two of us, laughing and looking forward to the day to come.

He takes a turn into a grove of mature keawe trees that opens to a cliff where the ocean tumbles into the basalt below. The vista treats the eye to 180 degrees of wild open ocean. Impenetrable dark blues dissolve into an aquamarine paradise which is ruffled with white water. In the shallows near the edge, boulders and sand appear slightly distorted in the undulation of the surf. Our company are the sun, birds and bugs.

Dad backs the Bronco to the edge, not too close, but still at the edge. You could say he approached his wild life the same way, always at the edge, on the precipice of being completely engulfed and at the same time, completely free.

We unload the Bronco, pulling out fishing poles and tackle, diving gear and snacks. Dad always packed the best lunch. Long before I rubbed the sleep from my eyes in the morning, my father was up drinking black coffee and making fresh spam musubi. Fresh fruit, canned juice and Maui style shrimp chips. Ah, shrimp chips, so delicious and crispy, deceivingly shrimpy without actually having a trace of shrimp; no diving trip was complete without shrimp chips. It’s funny how your taste buds can conjure up memories, like how Maui style shrimp chips always reminds me of these dive trips. I stuff a few chips in my mouth and hop out of the Bronco to help dad unload.  

Dad is geared up with his weight belt and baggy surf shorts clinging desperately to his non-existent butt. His fins, mask and snorkel in one hand and his spear in his other he motions me to follow him down the rocky coast to the water. I take each step with my tobies carefully as the rocks are slippery and my reflexes aren’t exactly cat-like. Dad throws his spear into the water and gently dives into the surge. I follow like a little duckling though I look more like a baby seal. I swing in and out of the surge trying to put on my fins. Dad waits patiently outside the surf.

Dad taught me to spit in the mask to help defog it. I hawked up a big wad of something and smushed it around on the lens with my fingers. I rinsed it in the ocean and plastered it to my face. I put my snorkel in and transformed into a true beauty of the sea! Dad would call me his “little puffer fish” and with the stomach I had on me at the time, I’ll admit there was a striking resemblance.

Make no mistake though, I was a predator of the open ocean when I put my dive gear on. No more nice puffer fish! Listening to my breaths underwater makes you feel like you’re listening to yourself from the inside. I could hear every inhale and if I closed my eyes I could see my respirations. Of course with such auditory power comes the desire to elevate to the highest possible emotion. For me that meant exhaling to the tempo of the Jaws theme song. Something about hearing your breath thrum ‘duhn, duhn, duhn, duhn, duhn, duhn’ makes you feel like a powerful predator. And its true, small fish feared me.

While I was kicking around and humming the Jaws theme song, my dad was spearing wiki and uhu and omilu. I watch him effortlessly cut through the water, unload his three prong into an uhu and bring it to the surface. He pulls the fish from his spear and takes out his dive knife from his belt. He jabs the knife into the top of the fish’s skull and wiggles it around, essentially scrambling its brain. He called this “braining” the fish. I never had the stomach for that part or the part that came next. Holding the fish tight in his left hand he shoves a large metal rod through the eyes. Once the rod is through, dad pushes the fish down along a line that secures the fish, the rod then slides back and rests on the fish’s head at a 90 degree angle. The rod and line are attached to a 40ft line and an empty Clorox bottle that acts as a buoy. The other end Dad holds as he tows his “stringer” of fish behind him.  

When I wasn’t terrorizing small reef fish, I was usually dwandling behind my father. Swimming along his stringer, I watch the hollow eyes of the fish as they are dragged through the water. I inspect their scaley bodies and foreign mouths. I watch the blood flow and mix with the water like ruby ribbons. I’m in my own world, wondering what the fishs’ lives were like, amazed that I got to be so close, admiring their beauty even though they were dead.

I hear shouting underwater and it pulls me from my fishy trance. My father’s waving at me. “Get away from that stringer!” I put my head down and paddle as fast as I can. I reach him and he looks upset. “How many times do I have to tell you to stay away from the stringer? If sharks want to come they are going to go right for that stringer of fish. I don’t want you anywhere near that. Understand?” I spit out my snorkel but only nodded. I was now afraid there might be sharks. He smiled at me and resumed swimming.

Sometimes dad would spot a moray eel and he would spear a small fish and feed it to the eel. Our diving trips were like National Geographic epics to me. The underwater world is so fascinating. That’s what it is, a world, a mysterious, seemingly enclosed great big world. On the surface I am an intruder with my funny face plunged into the surface, big tube sticking out of my mouth. I don’t belong here. And yet, all this life accepts my presence perhaps because they know I’m not permanent.

And nothing is.

Listening to Dreaming Man by Neil Young