These weren’t the piano lessons of my youth.

Quite the opposite.

Gone was the septuagenarian teacher crowding

me on a piano bench at my grandmother’s

house, extolling the importance of Christian

hymns. “Old Rugged Cross,” “Jesus Loves Me,”

“How Great Thou Art.” Grandma finally accepted

my resignation after a few solid years of protest.

Then last spring, as the pandemic droned on, I’d

lost my job, and our schools in the Boston area

remained closed, I decided to start taking piano

lessons again.

It had been 30 years. The grand staff was a

foreign language and the only key I could

recognize was middle C.

The first day, I propped up my phone, clicked a

Zoom link for our lesson and found an energetic

college student staring back at me.

I’d been thinking about returning to piano for

a while, but never had the free time required

for learning a skill until the shutdown in March.

‘A BETTER TIME

THAN ANY’:

FINDING JOY IN

MUSIC LESSONS,

JAMS