Last night my neighbor Linda Smith stood in her blond softness in the twilight. Her husband, Randy, hovered nearby. Christopher held our panting Pit Bull, Captain, at the end of a bright red leash. Its color fading like the rest of us into black-and-white of nightfall.

Randy’s mother Arleda, who they’d memorialized with their song and dance the day before, watched us from somewhere, watched and hummed as Linda told Christopher and I how Arleda had played matchmaker first by hiring Linda to teach music at her preschool, and later also.

“And then yesterday, I realized, you know I was kind of a pathetic single mom of a 3-year-old, and they chose me…they chose me. They saw something of value I couldn’t see in myself at the time, that I didn’t even know was there, and said, “She is worth saving.”

I crossed the pavement onto their lawn in 10 seconds and, asking permission first, took Linda into my arms. I cried. She cried. I knew what she meant. I feel like we’ve all been there, that pathetic place, and know what it feels like to be swooped into an embrace larger than what we can see.

And then she said, “Congratulations you two, on your engagement. And the fact you make music together is critical.”

I turned and grinned at Christopher. Did he hear what she said? And I repeated it and then Randy nodded vigorously. “Yes. The fact you make music together is critical.”

Christopher and I laughed because we had just walked for an hour through the streets processing the fact Christopher has a fierce inner critic he calls “a monster” who had threatened our novel musical partnership, and in doing so, the very core of our love relationship also.

On our walk, we met two other couples.

Up on 5th Street, near Mapleton Ave., Dawn called to us from her boyfriend John’s house, where they sat together on the wooden porch swing. They’d performed tango in a group on the mall the same day we’d performed at a Farm-to-Table brunch.

We asked each other how it went, and both couples said, “Great” or the three of us said “Great.” Christopher still held his monster’s hand, wary in the greying light.

John told us he hadn’t performed since kindergarten, and as he stepped on stage, his eyes teared up with memories and adrenaline coursed through his belly. And it went well. And they were prepared.

“My friend says he now takes the 15 minutes before the performance to let himself just feel his anxiety,” said Dawn, looking a whole lot like Susan Sarandon with curly red hair pouring from her high pale forehead. Sunglasses covered her eyes. “He used to try and stay calm, but then it would all hit him at once when he got onstage.”

John’s open warm eyes expressed a fluid relationship with his emotions that I find such a relief in men. I felt happy for them. They smiled and encouraged us as we waved goodbye, stepping over the sidewalk and back into the street.

Almost home, we met Jess and Parker, young and friendly and surrounded by four children under age 5, standing in the driveway of their new rental home at the end of our street. We stopped to hear each name and nod. They petted Captain. Jess’ warm Southern twang led me to ask where they’re from: Nashville. We asked Parker if he played music.

“Yes, I do. But you know when you say you play music, and you’re from Nashville, everyone assumes you’re really good,” he said. “I play drums, harp, anything with strings, none of them well.”

“But you can jam with friends and neighbors anytime someone starts up some music,” I said.

He grinned. “Yes.”

They asked after our performing together, what kind of music we do, if we’re in a band.

“We’ve just started doing this together,” Christopher said.

“Just starting out,” Parker said, looking at Christopher, and I felt happy to my toes the way he allowed that Christopher, tall and white-haired, could of course just be starting out just as a 20-something might. Of course! Why not!?

I did share that Christopher’s been making his own electronic music for a long time.

We waved and were across the street from home when Randy and Linda arrested us.

After saying goodnight to them, we returned at last into the still hot small house for water at the kitchen table. Christopher said, “Wow. I feel so held through this with so much grace.” His blue eyes gleamed almost black with surprise.

The universe has conspired to support us to stay with it, to stay together, and offered us three ways love and partnership could look. Each couple shared warmth, light, and encouragement with us and something essential about music too, about acceptance, and growing, and the process, and love, and that“Making music together is critical.”

I’ve come into this morning feeling hungover, though I didn’t drink anything, and still sleepy. I slept through the night last night for the first time in a few weeks.

The long walk at evening seems just the right thing to recover from the heating Earth and the stress and the self-doubts and just rise into being like the moon.

Thank you for showing us we’re so far from alone. That there is a constant joke out there, a version of nod-nod, wink-wink going on all the time for us, if we’re only paying attention.

Thanks, thanks for getting our attention. It’s the least we can do to allow and trust and say yes. Please. Thank you.

That got our attention.

“I’m so tired,” I hear repeatedly, in a nonstop protest of flies.

I try to be kind, but I also resist. Oh, come on, I say. So, what?

The words melt inside me like butter. I ascend. I sleep, and the fan whirs us closer to another summer day, hot like a frying pan, ascendant, sweet and rich and full and we must take it all if we’re to drink anything and be nourished.

It’s an obstinacy of buffalo, a storytelling of crows, a mischief of mice. And they run all over us and tell us secrets and we open like shells and nourish the world as it devours all we have to give, one day at a time, and fills us up again, and starts anew until our bodies end.

My dear, my love, I say I do.