at dusky sundown...

I haven't felt like this in a long time. I don't even have words for it, really. Used to feel it much more. Not nostalgic. That kinda sucks. This is comfortable. It's like a warm blanket and soup. Not that either.

My grandkid, who has autism, once said, "If I had a list of feelings, I could tell you which one this is."

Yeah.

I've been home all day. Busy for weeks. For months. Then today, home and ignoring all the busy I could be. Fixed good food for lunch. LOVED fixing good food, loved cooking, loved the steam on the windows, loved that it was cold sunshine outside, loved that the things in my house belong where they are. Feeling like a cat with a saucer of warm goats milk.

This evening, Honey got out his guitar and was playing his fey songs. He's laying on his back with the guitar on his chest and he starts playing, going wherever the music goes. His eyes are closed and he seems to be asleep. In fact, if you make a loud noise, or the phone rings, he startles awake, just as if he's been asleep.

After all the fey music is done, he winds it up with mundane songs. I was too lazy to move, so enjoying the growing twilight at the window, the fact that the house was dark -- we've started turning off the lights at dusk so we can watch night come -- it comes slowly and slowly we take the night back into light again, first with a candle and then with lamps. Why didn't we always do this?

As he started into mundane music, random songs, I got my guitar. Thanks to my rather recent acquisition of a dulcimer (named Addie Bell), honey and I can now play music together. We both owned guitars, but couldn't play them together. Something about my tuning in to AddieBell, tuning in to song, made it possible for us to play together. It takes a lot of concentraion and we can't always pull it off. When we do, it's lovely.

I strum a G, and he strums a G and we're reasonably in tune, so I take off on Bluebird of Happiness, then roll into Riders Lament, fumble my way through Darcy Farrow and we do a crazy bluesy version of Me and Bobby McGee. These are the songs I brought to the mix -- way back when we first got together. We sing the ones he brought, "Mama Tried", and "Daddy Frank". Then I strum an E minor and hum -- and start singing a nonsong -- a song that just comes with the chords -- E minor to D to C  to G to A minor... and on and he's right with it. The words say that we once walked in the dark, without seeing where to step and made our way past too many misteps and too many lost paths and too many higways with no one on them. And the song reached higher and said that now our road is lit from a sun that shows the way and that where we're going is home where we've always been. And he sings the verse again with me. And the song ends and we both say "wow". And we both say "yeah".

And I think the word is content.