Kenny Chesney had a hit song years ago called “The Good Stuff.” You can find it on YouTube here.

It’s about a newly married young couple who has a fight that sends the husband down the road to the local bar where he asks the bartender for some of “the good stuff.” Instead of a shot of whiskey, the older man behind the bar sets a glass of milk on the counter and proceeds to talk about what “the good stuff” really means.

He tells stories about his own life, about finding and marrying the love of his life, about the “long first kiss on the second date, how she looked with the rice in her hair.” About their children and grandchildren. And then about losing her to cancer and finding himself at the bottom of a bottle because his heart was broken into a million tiny pieces. Climbing his way out.

He reminds the young man that the good stuff isn’t behind the bar in a bottle. It’s at home with his new wife.

That song struck a chord the first time I heard it, as songs do. It reminded me of my own life. I hadn’t had a love of my life or a great loss like the bartender, but I had my parents as an example of great love.

When Kenny Chesney says, “It’s eating burnt suppers the whole first year and asking for seconds just to keep her from tearing up,” I’m reminded of the first breakfast my mom made for dad in 1950, oatmeal so thick it couldn’t be stirred. As the story goes, Dad said, “You sure don’t make oatmeal like your mother does,” and Mom, without thinking, picked up the salt shaker and threw it, hitting him “right between the eyes.”

That was in May 1950.

This week I’m living the Good Stuff.

My sweet daddy, at eighty-nine, had a health episode at church this past Sunday that caused my Mom and my brothers to insist on a trip to the ER (in Amarillo no less, 110 miles away). The attending doc pronounced that maybe he had a heart attack, maybe not, that his heart rate was fluctuating between 38 beats and 90 beats. My parents chose to forego a night in the hospital and further tests.

When asked, Dad said, “I want to go home”

So we have gathered, my sister from Oklahoma City and me from Santa Fe, various grandchildren and great-grandchildren, to sit on the porch, to help my mom, to have conversations with Dad, to cook big meals for piles of people. There’s no diagnosis, not portent of gloom, nothing we can really pin down, other than that this seems like something important. Like we need to take a moment to step away from our regular routines for Mom and Dad.

It seems like the Good Stuff. Like everything else that was on our schedule needs to move into the background while we reaffirm what we already know – that family is a gift, that a life like the one my parents have created is precious, that sitting on the porch or brewing a pot of coffee and just talking to one another between meals is the absolute best way to spend our days right now.

I had a relatively important meeting and a lunch today. I could have easily gotten in my car and driven home to be present for that. Instead I cancelled, with the hope that I can reschedule sometime in the future. And if not, it’s okay.

Because what we’re doing here really is the Good Stuff.

Yesterday my daughter Johanna moved a functioning record player out onto the porch and Mom got out the albums they like best. Her first choice from the top of the pile was Eddie Arnold. My sister and I knew all the words to “Make the World Go Away” because we’ve heard it all our lives, and Belinda sang along while she swept the porch. When “Cattle Call” came on, I tried to yodel, making my dad smile.

Mom put on Hank Williams, and as I came out from the kitchen with the glass spray for the patio table, she had Dad up out of his chair for a couple of stanzas, dancing to “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” All my life, my parents have danced in the kitchen or the living room to songs that are as familiar to me as the Baptist hymns I grew up with. Patsy Cline singing “Crazy.” Williams and “Hey Good Lookin.”

If you’ve read other posts here, you know my parents just celebrated their 71st anniversary. Seventy-One years of dancing in the living room, and while my dad now spends the majority of his days sleeping in the rocking chair on the porch or in a recliner in the living room, he got himself up for a turn with Mom in his arms. Dancing the Porter Shuffle once again.

I don’t know if my dad will live another week or month or another decade, although I know a decade is not what he’d choose. When he says, “I want to go home,” I’m relatively certain that he’s not just talking about the front porch.

For now, we’ve left our other lives behind and we’re living them right here, right now, doing what they’ve trained us to do our entire lives by being an example. They know what’s important. They show up when they’re needed. They slow down when it’s called for.

This is it. This is the Good Stuff.

Thanks for checking in.