On some luxurious mornings in bed before the sun comes up my husband draws me to him, tunes his phone to an American classics music radio station from New York and lays the phone on his chest.

We drowse there together, my head on his shoulder, his arms around me, listening to music.

Outside in the almost morning yard the silver trees are listening too.

“Lover, When You’re Near Me.” “When Stars Fell On Alabama.” “Just the Way You Look Tonight.”

The room holds the music around us in her quiet way.

There’s all the time in the world.

“I Remember you,” my husband sings along into my ear. “You’re the one who made my dreams come true, a few, kisses ago.”

His voice, ever-so-natural, ever-so-true, reaches down into me.

He presses his lips to my forehead.

“This is it,” I think.

This is the message I’d seen that morning years and years before when I was in that restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico when I had turned to my left and saw next to my table that someone had hand painted the word “Bliss” on the restaurant’s blue stucco wall.

“Bliss.”

The wonderful old lyrics from the wonderful old songs come right out of the phone, slide down onto the bed and cuddle up next to me.

I stay in my husband’s arms, the fragrance of sleep and the quietude of a room not quite awake surround me.

Bliss.

Moments of perfect happiness, in which we are typically oblivious of everything else.

Yes.

I get up to make coffee and take with me into the kitchen remembrances of bliss. Bliss while I was painting. Bliss while I was writing, when I was walking in the mountains, even when I was holding a child, cooking, or taking a shower.

I think again that bliss is a state of mind dependent not on what is outside of me — but on what is inside of me — and how in most instances, it was brought about by the simplicity of focus.

I imagine my kitchen walls having been hand painted — they drip with the word I’d seen on the wall in the Santa Fe restaurant — and I re-play in my mind the morning’s particular moments of bliss

The water starts to boil.

The sun creeps up over the purple edge of the mountains.

From the other room I can still hear the music playing.

“I Remember You.”

It’s that simple.

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Author Bio: Carmelene Melanie Siani

Carmelene writes stories from every day life and how life itself offers lessons to help us grow, expand, and put our feet on higher ground.

https://www.facebook.co/StoryBelly/

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