Goodnight sweetheart, well it's time to go...
Goodnight sweetheart, well it's time to go...

There's a contentment there. I find myself humming that, especially when everything has gone to hell and the day is a loss, and yet there is still the final evening bits to get through.

It's Sha-NA-NA in my head. A sense of contentment settles over me, a sense of belonging - to another time, a younger time - a time before pain. Well. A time before this particular kind of pain, or even the pain of what was coming a few years after that song stopped being the soundtrack to my evening.

I'm humming it now. Funny. Sometimes I catch myself singing it under my breath and realize, for the first time that day, that it really has been an ass of a day. That I'm in a way protecting myself, giving myself a little buffer. How ridiculous that it's a 50s throwback ditty from the 70s that offers a sort of protection well into the new teens. 10s? Teens? Oh who cares.

That's got me thinking now. What other small bits of recalled contentment do I grab as they float by? Are there images, phrases, gestures maybe? Yes. There are. My father holding his hand up in the classic "OK" gesture while saying, "Primo!" when he liked something. My daughter asking "What you got there, Mama?" when she caught me with chocolate.