I have been given many gifts in my life, but few as sweet as the one I received this weekend.
To fully appreciate it, you have to picture me the first time I sat down at the piano. I was a little curly-haired kid who could barely reach the keys, and the foot pedals were definitely a distant dream. But the physical sensation of making sounds come to life was one that became imprinted on my body. The noises I made may not have sounded like music to anyone but me, but no one stopped me from making them, either.
I lived with a piano from the time I was a tot. I learned to play, quit, learned again when I was a teenager and played throughout college. But as a graduate student, I couldn't afford to buy a piano and there was none nearby I could play. The electronic keyboard I tried as a substitute lacked everything magical I experienced through music. So those abilities lay fallow while I fertilized other creative fields.
From the time our son was born, my husband used to dance with him to reggae, R&B and rock.
Colter has always been moved by music, and we gave him things to shake, rattle and roll as soon as he could hold them. Pot lids were a particular favorite. As soon as he could handle a drumstick without poking us, we gave him two of those and things to bang on. He even had a little toy piano with cardboard sheet music that displayed color-coded versions of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and "This Old Man."
I'm not sure whether Colter was born with a sense of rhythm or if he developed it in his early months, but there is no question that it has become innate. He unconsciously taps his foot or sways to any patterned sound he hears. Set anything to a song and my son will learn it, including the preamble to the Constitution (thank you, "Schoolhouse Rock").
So when a co-worker offered her piano to me, I felt so incredibly lucky and overwhelmed. How could I say no to something that had brought so much joy into my life?
My husband felt differently, though, being the one who (along with some neighbors and friends) had to actually transfer the 800-pound, 100-year-old wooden instrument some 60 miles to our house.
After much sweating and shoving, I watched his doubts dissolve the first time our son sat down to play. It was an instantaneous love affair that will no doubt last a lifetime.
At 6 years old, the only rule I have established for Colter is that we only play the piano with our bodies, not our light sabers.
It has been a long journey from my first notes to my son's and it makes me wonder, how do you breed creativity? I think that as a parent, you can begin by providing the tools and letting the technique follow.
I was not a prodigy who could read music before I could read letters. My piano playing had many stops and starts, many evenings cramming for recitals and probably too few afternoons learning my scales. But my parents let me learn to love music before I learned to hate music lessons.
Ironically, they may never have realized how much I treasured the gift they gave me. In the midst of my excitement about having a piano at home again, I was startled by my stepmother's comment that playing never seemed particularly meaningful to me.
After recovering from my shock, I questioned her and realized that she thought piano was just a rite of passage for me because I never became proficient enough to sight read music quickly, and I couldn't play by ear. I explained to her that these deficiencies were more a function of my personality than my lack of passion. I'm someone who doesn't cook without a recipe and will not go anywhere without getting directions and following the map. I am not spontaneous about anything, least of all something as profoundly important to me as music.
Some of us are improvisers and some of us are not. Whatever the temperament, music is a sweet gift. And while it may be better to give than to receive, in this case, to give is to receive.
This LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.