Kay and I packed our identical painting kits, ones we had bought together at the Art Spot in Edmonds and 50 times the amount of food we would need or come close to eating and travelled to The Sandpiper at Pacific Beach in a driving rainstorm. It was to be three days of painting and long walks on the beach.

The rain was relentless and I was the one to lug everything from the car because 1) I’m younger and steadier and 2) I chose Cabin 4 because it has good light but it also has a flight of stairs. Still, it must be stated at once that Kay, though an octogenarian while I have a ways to go, is vibrant and healthy; funny and fun. She just lost her partner and has to do many new things for herself. I’m a little protective of her. So I was happy to compromise my back, heaving all that stuff up the slippery stairs in the rain.

The Sandpiper used to be a bustling place, clean and well-tended. Now it’s shabby and slowly being reclaimed by sand and water. Seabrook down the road is turfing it out. I’ve stayed here with Nina, with other friends, with a group for my 60^th birthday and many times alone. I still love it because of its location. Twenty yards from Cabin 4 is the sandy beach, wide and expansive.

There was no bustle. In fact, we were the only ones there for the first three nights. The owner wasn’t even there. She had an intern running the place which seemed to mean mainly sitting in reception waiting for something to happen. The only thing that happened was me. The first afternoon I went up to get a dura-log for the woodstove.

“Also, we need matches,” I said.

“What is matches?”

I stared at her for a second. “To make a fire.”

“Oh.”

Jennie was from Moscow, here to learn to be an American hotelier.

“Are you homesick? I asked

“No, I love this. But I go home in December.”

She would go back to join friends in St. Petersburg who were setting up a hotel.

“We’re all alone here,” I said that evening. No lights came from the two huge lodges and there was no one next door in Cabin A. (I don’t know why Cabin A is next to Cabin 4 so don’t ask.)

I remembered the beds as being comfortable but mine felt like an old pull-out couch with bars pushing into my hip-bones. I got up several times to pee, to open the sliding glass door to hear the waves, to open my window, to shut my window. Every time I got up, there was a light on in Kay’s room. When I finally got up for the day at 6:00, I peeked in at the lump in the bed.

“Oh god, she’s dead,” I thought. Then I made tea and read my book. Kay finally dragged out of bed, looking like death because she had slept like the dead. She raised her eyebrows at my book and my tea when I said I thought she had died.

We painted all morning, I went for a walk on the beach, fixed us some lunch, went for another walk, then curled up with my book. Kay painted the rest of the day. We each had projects of our own. Kay did a skating scene for her Christmas card. I worked on glazing a forest scene, which required a lot of waiting for it to dry, during which time I did a fat robin and some dresses hanging on a line. I was planning to write “change of a dress” on it and give it to a friend who just moved.

We worked together on crows. Crows in flight, crows at rest and with wings of watercolor drips. We had crows all over the cabin. We discussed wing and tail size, we tried different techniques. I scattered popcorn on the deck to attract crows so we could study them. Crows absorbed us for one whole day.

I went to the shop for another dura-log.

“You need matches?” Jennie asked.

The second night Kay had another near-death experience. I got up around 5:00 to, you guessed it, pee. As I passed Kay’s room, I saw her slumped on the floor at the foot of the bed. One end of the mattress stood up like the bow of a sinking ship.

In the dim of the early morning and without my glasses, I couldn’t quite figure out what I was seeing. Then I thought Kay had not made it to the toilet and while trying to pull wet sheets off the bed, she had died. I peered closer.

“Kay?”

“Hi,” she said conversationally.

“What are you doing?”

“I sat on the edge of the bed and the mattress slid off.”

“What time was this?”

“Oh, around 2:30.”

“You’ve been like that since 2:30?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can I help you get up?”

“No. It’s pretty comfortable.”

“So you’re going to stay down there?”

“What time is it?”

“5:00.”

“Yeah, for a while.”

I went back to bed for another hour. When I got up for the day, Kay was snoring comfortably. I made tea as quietly as I could and read until I heard a voice.

“I’d like to get up now.”

There was a bed frame but no box springs, just two mattresses stacked on top of each other. The bottom mattress was slippery like flag silk. I pushed the top mattress into place and sat on the edge of the bed. It slipped down.

“How very odd.”

“I’m going to sleep for another hour,” Kay said.

“OK,” I said. I went back to my book.

I went for a walk in my boots before I started painting. Still chilly out, I wanted socks on my feet. Within five minutes, I had strayed too close to the surf and there was six inches of water in my boots. I sloshed over to a log, emptied the boots and squeezed out the socks. I left them by the log and continued for a mile barefoot before turning back.

Mine was still the only car in both lots.

“We’re the only ones here,” I said.

“You don’t say.”

We painted, it rained, it cleared up, the sun appeared, it clouded over, the sun reappeared. I went for another walk, barefoot from the get-go and came back my feet bone-chilled. Kay painted on, lost and found in her own world, concentrating for hours.

During that second walk I hashed through things that were on my mind: a work dilemma, a relationship problem and– with a lump in my throat– thoughts of someone I had always loved and who was no longer there.

Ahead of me were three little sandpipers. I hadn’t seen any sandpipers yet but there they were, running back and forth with the surf. Three little birds. I thought of the Bob Marley song:

Three little birds on my doorstep.  .  .
Saying, this is my message to you:
Don’t worry ‘bout a thing
Cause every little thing’s gonna be all right.

I fumbled for my phone. I wanted a picture of these little messengers. But when I was ready to click the picture, they had disappeared. But I didn’t need the picture. I had the message. The sea is like that. It washes everything onto the shore and then carries it away.

Pacific Beach

Cabin 4