Playing piano is a joy -- except when you're a kid

When our house was only partly full of children and we still had something laughingly called “free time” in our lives, my husband and I took up the piano.

Neither of us had an ounce of training, so we had no illusions of achieving more than the most primitive music making. Still, it was a joy. Vast neglected portions of our brains — where music theory goes — lit up under the unaccustomed stimulus. It seemed incredible that not only had Mozart been kind enough to scribble down short pedagogical pieces, but that we, with our amateur fingers, could actually play them.