Try drinking wine with a psychic

It was the middle of the night and I was growly. I couldn’t get comfortable. I flipped from my left side to my right, shook out my pillow, adjusted the quilt around my shoulders and fumed. You said you’d help anytime I needed it, I said to my dead husband.

A psychic friend had relayed the message over a glass of Cab Merlot on my front deck just three weeks before. Well, several glasses. He, his wife and I were watching the long rays of sun slip behind the evergreens at the base of the property and talking about life, kayaking and COVID. Then one friend cocked his head. “I’m getting a message for you,” he’d said. It was that my husband said he was there for me. Anytime, just call, my husband had said to the psychic.

It seemed sweet, if not terribly practical.

Now, in bed, I said, Okay, I’m calling. I can’t resolve this. I’ve tried. Before that conversation on the deck, it would never have occurred to me to ask.

I didn’t get any answer. Nothing whatever happened.

When I woke in the morning, I’d forgotten my snit at the situation I was dealing with or even that I’d been awake for so long. It was August, one of those long grey dawns that turns gold and blue. With those colours, anything seemed possible. I made tea, meditated and then checked the tide table. Yes! I’d walk Medicine Beach with Kira, my seventy-four-pound Goldendoodle. It was going to be another hot day; it’d be good to get out early.

 I parked up by the road so we’d have the pleasure of walking through brush before descending to the beach. Kira loves crashing about through the salal, being a Wild Beast.

 It was a fine walk. One of our better ones. On the first bit, the only part of the beach most people know, Kira failed to notice the deer carcass at high tide level, so we didn’t have to have that discussion. On the second part of the beach, the rocky, harder-footing part, she didn’t discover otter poop on logs to rub her head in. Had the otters forsaken this area or was she growing better behaved now that she was older?

 I was grateful for the perfect temperature, the silky feel of sun on my bare arms, the cool of the air beside the water. The tide was so low the dog and I walked right around the toe of the reef to the far beach, no scramble up rocks needed. This was the third and final part of our walk.

 The pocket beach at the end is a special place. It slopes gradually, which is what Kira prefers; she’s only a sort-of water dog. I threw sticks in the ocean for her and she galumphed in after them sending up sprays of water like a float plane.

I often vow to bring water, a journal and pen and spend hours here. I’ve only done it once. Part of the magic is amnesia. I forget until I get here how wonderful the view is and how peaceful it is. The dog and I always have the place to ourselves. There are three houses on the bay; two used occasionally in summer, one apparently never visited. At the farthest end, I sat down on a bleached log, facing the ocean. I couldn’t see any of the houses.

Looking out toward South Pender, I could see Poets Cove resort, with its white buildings and anchored boats. Just north of Poets was the tiny dab of white that’s the navigation marker on Skeleton Islet. It’s a burial island, a place of spirits. A sign politely requests visitors not to walk there. Just before the islet, not visible from here, is Beaumont Marine Park. I’ll often put my kayak in at Medicine Beach and paddle to Beaumont. That whole west-facing shore is alluring. It’s open, with rocky expanses and lots of arbutus trees.

 Now on the pocket beach, the sun was starting to get warm. The air was still, with the surface of the water twinkling molten points of light at us. After a few minutes, I told the dog, “All right, let’s get on with the day,” and got up. Kira waved her half-dry, plumy tail. In her books, motion was always good. I found a just-right piece of driftwood and threw it for her. On our way back down the beach, the game of stick morphed into a game of chase, where we run right toward one another and the dog dodges at the last moment and does spinnies, turning in circles at high speed like a puppy. For Kira, spinnies express a high form of happiness.

 We re-crossed the toe of the reef and headed north along the rocky beach. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The ocean was thirty feet off to the right, separated from us by oblong seaweed-covered rocks that range from palm-size to as big as a footstool. To the left were twenty-foot cliffs of fractured shale where moss, sedums and saxifrage grow. Occasional stunted bushes of ocean spray and serviceberry insert their roots into deeper cracks with wild honeysuckle and vine waxberry throwing out tendrils along the rock face. Fringing the cliff, at the top, are Douglas firs, some of which lean perilously outward. It’s all eroding, a landscape in motion. Pieces of the cliff often break off and slide down onto the beach. I walked an arm’s length from the cliffs where the most level footing was, on the smallest pieces of shale. I said to the dog, teasing her, “Hey Furface, it’s a good thing I love you.”

 Then I said, surprising myself, “And it’s a good thing you love me.” My long wakefulness of the night before flooded back, asking my dead husband for help, my feeling of sadness in what I was facing. I realized in the sentence I’d just spoken, the “you” who loved me was my husband, not just the dog. That was loud and clear. This was the answer I hadn’t received the night before. This is what happens when you try drinking wine with a psychic, I thought, that I’d even reached out for help.

  At the very instant I got this remembrance of asking for assistance, something lightly struck the back of my head. What? It wasn’t hard enough for a bird. It was too much pressure for a leaf.

 I spun around and there was a big black and yellow butterfly, a Western Tiger Swallowtail, zigzagging away. These are among the most-commonly seen butterflies in our area, though this is relative, they’re not an everyday sight. Swallowtails are substantial creatures; their wingspan can reach almost four inches across, over nine centimeters. The butterfly had just smacked me on the head. I’d seen them occasionally in my garden but never on a beach. There were no gardens in this area, no plants in bloom on the cliffs.

Bapped by a butterfly. Never before in my whole life. I burst out laughing. “Yeah, I get it,” I said aloud. “I get it, darling.” My husband was adding a little emphasis in case I hadn’t quite got the message that he loved me and was in fact there for me. Whatever he could do for me, he would.

I laughed all the way back down the beach.

Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly