Sands of heaven
BECAUSE IT is December, I am thinking of July. It was pleasant this year, and improved further by my 9-year-old's discovery that boogie boards can carry you close to heaven. On the weekends, I sat with my toes in the sand of a North Shore beach, monitoring her ascent, reading the paper, and doing sudoku. There are alternate routes to heaven , but 9 is too young to know them.
The beach gets crowded quickly in July. By late morning, hundreds of strangers were sitting inches apart ignoring one another, listening to separate boomboxes, eating from separate coolers, sunscreening fields of separate flesh with varying SPFs. We were cheek by jowl yet anonymous, a small and changing city with no interest in commonality.
One cloudy Sunday, we arrived as the tide was coming in. By lunchtime, even with the missing sun, you couldn't walk a straight line for all the bodies. I was reading the paper when I heard a boombox turn on behind me. It was louder than usual, and much more musical. The song had tune and harmony. I turned around. There was no boombox, but a circle of singing people at the end of the beach near the parking lot.
They were wearing suits and dresses, even the children, and they were barefoot, even the adults. There were some impressive hats. The singing rose and fell. Sunbathers stared. My boogie-boarder came out of the water.
" Whassup?" she said.
I said that there was some kind of church service going on. Maybe it was a prelude to a wedding. I pointed out the minister to her in the middle of the circle. He had a white suit.
We watched for a while, and so did the sunbathers. After a while, I picked up the paper again.
" Hey. He's heading for the water," my boogie-boarder said. The minister was making his way gracefully among the crush of bodies. He reached the tideline and started to wade in. Toes, ankles, calves. He stopped when the water hit his waist and little waves touched the belt of the white suit. There's a dry cleaning bill coming, I thought. He turned back toward the beach and held his arms out. Hundreds of us turned around to see what he saw.
A young man from the circle was coming toward him. Less gracefully, he waded into the water until they stood side by side. The minister said something we could not hear. Then he took the man by the neck and waist, and leaned him backward into the water. It was the briefest of baptisms. When his head bobbed up a second later, everyone in the prayer circle began to clap.
" Wow," said my boogie boarder. " Can I do that?"
The minister held out his arms again. This time a woman walked through the path of bodies. Her dress floated a little when the water lifted it, and she had some trouble with her balance. The minister met her at thigh depth and held her elbow to steady her.
She had to try several times before she allowed herself to be eased backward into the water. " I think maybe she don't swim," said someone a few blankets away. When her head popped up, the church members clapped harder. One raised a small camera and took a picture.
We were all watching. A woman near us, struck into decorousness, sat up and tugged down the edge of her bikini brief. Then she started to clap. Other women in bikinis and some men with beer bottles took the clapping up. It spread like a wave. The churchly clothed and the near-naked clapped together.
That wasn't what impressed my 9-year-old. She hugged her boogie board, thrilled to think there was a religion that would let her swim in her clothes. In fact, she has not been allowed to swim in her clothes, and now it is December, when only fools swim in their clothes. The boogie board is in the basement, awaiting resurrection. Youth being what it is, by next July she may forget she once saw strangers being carried a little closer to heaven, and other strangers clapping for them. Wonderful, wonderful sight!
Elissa Ely is a psychiatrist. 
