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Kids get the breaks
on Healing day

THEY keep coming back in and going back out, eyes shining, faces alight.

"I saw you out there," an auntie says, as a young girl shivers and smiles, pigtails and wet hair. "I heard your laugh before I saw you."

The sea is a healer.

Salt water always helps.

The kids go down to the ocean, to the water's edge, where the sand is wet. They're greeted there by surfers, smiling, open arms.

Here, everybody understands.

Are you ready to go surfing? Are you ready to have some fun?

And then they're on the boards, and paddling out.

And riding in, and then back out again.

It was Surfers Healing day, yesterday, in Waikiki. That wonderful day invented by the ever-smiling Izzy Paskowitz, after that wonderful discovery in 1996.

Izzy's son, Isaiah, has autism. But when they went out on the water together ... it was amazing. Somehow, surfing -- Izzy's love all his life -- helped more than anyone had dared dream.

And soon Izzy was inviting other parents to let their autistic kids come out on the waves with him. To discover this kind of fun, to touch this calming effect.

To go surfing.

Every child should feel this free.

Every parent should share this joy.

And Surfers Healing was born. Izzy and his wife, Danielle, founded free surf camps for autistic kids. Yesterday's was at the Duke statue. Today they'll be on Maui. There are Surfers Healing camps at Malibu, San Diego, New Jersey. Long Beach and Montauk, N.Y. People everywhere should feel this.

Yesterday, parents pointed cameras out at the ocean, beaming.

Yesterday, surfers smiled, waiting to take kids out, to ride double on their boards.

Yesterday, they surfed, some standing, most laughing. They rode the waves in, and then went back out.

AUTISM IS STILL kind of a mystery, at least to most of us.

"They're so frustrated," one of the surfers, Josh Froley, says.

"People with autism process and respond to information in unique ways," the Surfers Healing Web site reads.

"They're brilliant kids," Froley would say. They just haven't found a way to break through.

But here, everyone understands.

"Some might be verbal," a mom, Anna Jones, says. "Some might not."

And so the day's itinerary tells the story in pictures as well as these words:

The surfer will put me on the surfboard.
I will lay on my tummy.
I will listen to the surfer.
They will keep me safe.
When I am all done my mom and dad will be very happy and proud of me.
The beach and surfing are fun.

And it works. It really works.

"We get to see them smile," Froley says.

"Now I'm going to have to buy a surfboard," Jones says.

You can feel the parents' joy. You can see the kids' faces. It's a fun day at the beach, yes, but the Surfers Healing people are convinced it's something much deeper than that.

"It amazes me," Froley says. "A kid could scream the entire way out. Just scream and scream. The second you stand up, it just goes from fighting to smiling and laughter.

"You feel it," as you ride the wave together, Froley says. "You feel it through them."

"Not to be selfish," he says. But it's the best feeling in the world.

The water heals everyone.

"It's very freeing," Jones says. Her son, Christopher, 9 (almost 10), is out in the ocean like he's never coming back.

A surfer brings in a kid, a small boy, they ride in all the way to shore.

Was he scared?

"Not one bit," the surfer says. "Not at all. He's a natural. He didn't want to come back in."

They pause for a second, to see if anyone else needs a turn. And then they're paddling back out, out to freedom, out to the break. Again and again.

I want to go out there again.