My parents wanted me to wait, also, until I was older to start piano lessons, though I’d wanted to play the piano since I was a toddler watching in awe the pianist in Nordstrom department stores. It was just the same for me–the piano teacher who wanted to be sure I was the one who wanted to play and who became a grandmother to me, my daddy sitting in his chair in the living room asking me to play another and another, the “bump in the road” as a teenager, even when at 19 (and married and just newly expecting–yikes, that seems so youngto write it like that!) she said she didn’t think our lessons for the past two years had been doing much good–we talked about life rather than music throughout many of them. I’d been teaching for almost five years by that point, and it was just time. Just yesterday I was thinking about how much I miss her and the influence she had on my life in so many areas beside just music. And thinking that if I called her, she’d probably be disappointed at how little I’ve been playing since Troy was born. I think I’ll go sit on my bench for a while now…