The board is heavier than I expected, an awkward thing to drag along as you paddle and gasp and paddle some more, as you eventually start paying attention to the rhythm of the waves, so you can make your progress in the gaps between them, and then gather your fortitude and dive straight through the arc of water as it breaks over you. I hear the children laughing somewhere, Lindquist calling out some motherly instruction. My head reeks of brine. Then I emerge from the other side of an especially big nalu—that’s the Hawaiian word, the children have informed me, smug little bastards—and the world is blue and calm, the waves mere swells, the sun hot and white above us.

“Now get on your board,” Lindquist says. “Just straddle it, that’s right, like a horse. Paddle a bit, so the current doesn’t carry you out too far. There’s not much rip on this beach, so it’s good for beginners.”

I don’t quite understand the meaning of this word rip, but it does sound menacing and best avoided. The paddling I could grow to like, however. The ocean rustles like a living creature underneath me—and here I look downward, to make sure there’s not actually a living creature underneath me—and carries me on its back. Ahead lies the white beach, the jungle, the pale buildings on the ridge. Above it all, the sky without a cloud.

“Watch the shore,” calls Lindquist. “That’s how you get your bearings. The waves will carry you one way, so it’s up to you to counter the drift.”

I think I understand her. The board rises and falls with the incoming waves. I lie down on my stomach and rest my cheek against the slippery wood, so that my whole body moves in this delicious rhythm, surging and then idling, the sun baking me from above. Some small effort’s needed to keep from wandering off, but even that’s beyond me. Haven’t I struggled against the current all my life? Haven’t I fought and scrapped and survived? And all along there was another way. To lie on a strip of wood and allow the ocean to determine my course; to simply exist, lulled by the infinite strength of nature. Probably this is the meaning of heaven. You search and search, you think you glimpse it from time to time, in the aftermath of lovemaking or the bottom of a bottle of good champagne, and always it eludes you. Until now, perhaps? Here on the surface of a pacific ocean?

A round of screeching from the tadpoles. I lift my head and see a wall of approaching water. Lindquist yells something. Just hold on to your board, or something like that. Start paddling.