Yesterday was also the first time I had pulled out my guitar to play in a long time and today was the first time in… I don’t know when… that I spent some time just looking at my guitar.

It isn’t name brand, but my grandmother and mother chipped in to buy it for me on my 16th birthday. I had less than a year off of drugs when they had bought it for me. Fast-forward many years later to today: I find myself really LOOKING at my guitar.

I used to play it compulsively to keep myself from getting loaded. When a feeling was too difficult to work with, I sorted it out on this very guitar. I found myself thinking about how much sorrow and how much joy was expressed through this instrument. In fact, it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized that it is though this very guitar that I have the only gift my father ever gave to me. When I was around 21, my father taught me a blues tune on this guitar.

I had not ever realized how much I must have used this thing over the years. The wood is worn into fairly deep ruts on the fret board from my playing:

It is battered and cracked, but it is one of the few things that has been a constant in my life. Yesterday, when I realized that the only thing my father had given me was a blues song, Lilly and I just cracked up! I mean… that sounds like the opening line of your standard blues song! LOL!