Before I write about Broken Melody, I feel compelled to give some backstory.

My good friend, Alix, mentioned the guitar that David and I found at a local beach in Laguna Beach, CA. David was just a squirt when we joined Surfriders and chose Shaw's Cove as a beach where we volunteered to help clean up debris left by visitors. Shaw's Cove is a lesser known beach in Laguna. It's located in the North end and mostly frequented by locals. It's tiny and sheltered and a popular start point for SCUBA divers.

David and I weren't really the beachgoer types, but every so often I liked to loll on a blanket and read while David ran after sea gulls, popped kelp, and built sand villages with tunnels and deep holes. David was none too thrilled about the ocean. I'd grown up on water and loved sliding up and down ocean swells. So one day, I nudged him into the water.

It was a beautiful day. The sun smiled a photogenic smile, the breeze was too gentle to ruffle the water. The warmth was the type of warmth to make one lazy and dopey and happy to be alive. As David and I approached the water, I was full of positivity and reassurances that we were going to have the best time ever... that Mommy was going to be with him the whole time and that there was nothing to be afraid of and oh my gosh look at the quiet ocean! It was a perfect day for David's first ocean swim.

We entered the water, David's spindly legs wrapped around my waist, his arms around my neck. My back was to the horizon as we inched deeper and deeper until the water hit my waist. The whole time I was enthusiastically cooing, "See how much fun this is! There's nothing to be afraid of!" And then I turned to face the horizon where, like a lunatic tornado, a gigantic wave was about to pounce on us.

The wave came so fast and crashed so hard, David was ripped from my arms. When I resurfaced, I frantically looked for him and when I did find him, his face was full of terror. I came within inches of pulling him back into my arms, when a second wave bore down and tossed us into the air and then plunged us beneath. The undertow contributed to the terror as much as the towering waves. I was frantic, gasping, my eyes wild with fear as I looked for my son who finally popped to the surface like a bobber. Once again I reached my fingers, straining to clasp my son... and then another wave descended with a crushing fury.

We were rescued by lifeguards who later told me we'd experienced rogue waves - that it was an unfortunate fluke. This is what I found out about rogue waves that come in sets:

In the fields of nonlinear optic and fluid dynamics, modulational instability or sideband instability is a phenomenon whereby deviations from a periodic waveform are reinforced by nonlinearity, leading to the generation of spectral-sidebands and the eventual breakup of the waveform into a train of pulses.

The phenomenon was first discovered - and modeled - for periodic surface gravity waves (Stokes waves) on deep water by T. Brooke Benjamin and Jim E. Feir, in 1967. Therefore, it is also known as the Benjamin-Feir instability. It is a possible mechanism for the generation of rogue waves.

Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but that's all a bunch of donkey-nose gobbily-gunk, but it was that gobbily-gunk that left a lasting impression on me - of utter, undiluted fear of the ocean and its unpredictability.

Friends tried to coax me back in and I tried once, but was too jangled, mistrusting.

I haven't talked to David about this in many, many years. I don't know if the experience left indelible fears. He's rappelled from Blackhawk helicopters, so I'm not too concerned.

But let me get back to Shaw's Cove and my art.

I'm of the belief that art is in our lives every day in every possible manner if we look for it. So, one day when we were tidying up Shaw's Cove, we came across a shattered guitar. The strings were sprung every which way and wet air had pasted sand on portions. It caught David's imagination. We took it home. We called it Broken Melody. It's one of my favorites.

The guitar is on my screened porch. It's every bit a work of art as anything else in my home, and as valuable, if not more.

This old photo isn't very good. It's difficult to see the sprung strings. Sorry. I took several more but Photobucket isn't cooperating this morning. Grrrrr.







To conclude, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that as David and I were dragged from the roiling ocean that day, as I emerged, facing a beach with onlookers, I realized the top of my bathing suit was slung down around my waist. Gah.

Yeah. Not a good day. Yet, a good memory tempered by time, which always lightens and brightens even the darkest corners.

Um, no photos of me.