“All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.”   Ecclesiastes 1:7

The sea knew me, cocooned in a womb, centuries before my mother pushed me into being. 

I’m seven. Each summer, a block from the shingled cottage my great grandparents built, this Longport, New Jersey beach is the only world that exists. My feet slip through blistering sand, across the flat packed stretch, down to the water’s edge. I kneel and build a castle. Waves advance and retreat, shaping miniature landscapes, leaving a pint-sized pond for dipping my hand in and dripping sand swirls. Soon my castle looks as soft as the curls of the suave girl leaning against the lifeguard stand. I stare at her, wishing I was pretty, not hearing the monster wave behind me. It crashes against my back, whooshing my creation out to sea. 

The sun turns my neck and arms as red as the tulips that edge my grandmother’s garden in the spring. I dunk under breakers and come out to dry, licking the stinging salt off my lips. Foam crusts my hair into sticky lumps. I chat with passersby, sometimes following them to sit near their beach tent. Up toward the dunes, my dad in his rainbow-striped swim trunks and matching jacket rests in our folding chair with his head down, absorbed in his Weeds, Trees, and Turf magazine. He doesn’t see me seeing him.

Down the beach lies a cove formed by the giant Longport jetty, unmoved by the waves that try to devour it at high tide. I wish I was old enough to walk there and dare myself to leap between the boulders, but I must wait for someone to take me. That night in my room, I struggle to get my chubby body out of my ruffled blue bathing suit, surprised by wide white lines the day painted on my shoulders.  

I’m 15. The tide has turned; I am tall, with thick brown shiny hair and shapely legs. My church and school teach me to resist the longings that build inside my body. I follow the Lord’s rules, keeping myself as pure as I can for a future husband, though surges of desire sometimes wash me across the forbidden line. Like when my first serious boyfriend, up on the bluff above the abandoned railroad tracks, smothers my mouth and cheeks with kisses so deep they make me take his hand and guide it to the thick seam at the peak of my jeans. A moment of rubbing and I climax. The next moment, shame erases pleasure like the wave that dragged my sandcastle out to sea.

I’m 22. Each summer at the beach I bronze my body by slathering it with baby oil. This August I also diet, hoping to look slim in the swishing polyester-blend wedding dress my sister and I made. After six years of commitment, my betrothed and I glide down the aisle to Pachelbel’s Canon in D as three hundred beaming church members watch. On our honeymoon I discover that sex blessed by God, the bishop, and my parents is different than sex that is prohibited. A light inside me has switched off. No longer owning myself, I feel like tamped ground with a stick trying to probe it. 

I’m 40. We have four precious children, and our home is a haven and gathering place. I’m a successful self-taught artist, and a beacon in our religious community, a guide for some in the small suburban pond we swim in. Church services and doctrinal beliefs keep me even-keeled, smug and sure of my place in a safe world where nothing much rocks my boat. Our marriage thrives except when that train-track boyfriend gets mentioned. Then my husband’s face turns as hard as the rocks of the Longport jetty.    

I’m 50. Insights from somewhere deep rush through me in floods, widening my horizons. The sun glows above the ocean within, loosening the strict religious bonds I and six generations before me fervently worshipped. My sexual energy grows, then explodes like an underwater volcano. I get intense pleasure when my husband thrusts inside me. I’m sure I’ll feel exalted forever.

I’m 54, and I’m wrong. My whole life structure—God, community, eternal marriage—sweeps out to sea. I move on my own to the secular world of Philadelphia. I am free now, though I flounder like a dinghy in the storm that overcomes me. I still love the lyrical lines of Bible verses I memorized as a child, but no words are strong enough to right me. I thrash around like a kid in a lifejacket.   

I’m 65. Freedom is easier, like my childhood days at the beach. Through activism and therapy work, I have a large tent of friends and acquaintances. During afternoon naps, the waves of my white-noise machine shield me from the sounds of the number 53 bus rounding the woods, neighbors shouting into iPhones, and my new husband’s woody clarinet solo. The machine waves remind me of the beach sounds at our now torn-down Longport house.

I’m 70, letting swells of ease carry me. That same ocean noise buffers us when my husband and my boyfriend, together, pleasure me on the queen-sized bed in our guest room. Neither seems to notice or care about the brown blotches that dot my body from years without sunscreen. The sea surrounds us, reminding me to breathe and simply be, take in their loving attention, and search the remaining caves of shame from my past. My head tips back to watch towering clouds through the window above. Waves blend in with the purring sounds that start to flow from me. 

If there is a heaven after death, I think the sea will carry us there, no longer advancing and receding but rolling steadily through breakers and danger to the line where ocean meets sky, and we disappear.