(Originally published on my Facebook page October 21, 2018)
Salvation, Resurrection, Communion 2015
I reached for an oddly shaped brown shell in the wet sand, instead finding wings matted together by sea water. Saddened, I wondered how this goddess of the air could have fallen prey to the ocean waves. In my hand cup the wind must have dried her delicate wings enough to separate and tremble in the breeze. When another gust turned over her body, I secretly pretended it was a sign of life. With breath and fingertips I gently cleaned the ocean dust from her wings to see her true beauty. Movement, must be the wind again. And again.
I carried her back to show my wife, Debbie, and with a six-year old’s certainty declared, “I think she’s alive.” In Debbie’s eyes I saw a bit of doubt and a greater desire not to see me hurt. When I fully shielded her from the very wind she previously rode to flutter by, this shell boldly sat upright and curtsied.
She wouldn’t leave my hand. We talked silently for a few minutes, and her name was Beatrix. I didn’t name her, that’s what it was. I tried to release her to the tall sea grass behind our chairs but she wasn’t ready for that, so I took her back to our temporary home, on but not in my hand.
Inside, she still clung to me, walking backwards when I tried to move her to paper or furniture. I had to leave her for a while for dinner, but she waited and took her place again when I returned. Assuming she needed it, I put water in my palm and watched in awe, like witnessing birth, as she uncurled a long tongue and drank.
A butterfly named Beatrix drank water from my palm.
Her world was outside. It was evening. We expressed our mutual gratitude for saving something in each other and agreed we were always joined. I took her to a nearby planter with a slow water drip and released her onto a leaf. She was gone the next morning.
Three years ago today, it really happened.
