‘A BETTER TIME THAN ANY’: FINDING JOY IN MUSIC LESSONS, JAMS

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.