When my wife, Starla, began taking piano lessons, I didn’t give it a second thought. A music teacher for many years, she’s always expanding her instrumental and stylistic repertoire. So when she mentioned piano and music theory lessons from a friend, I didn’t blink an eye, especially since the lessons would be via FaceTime.
Starla, also in her mid-forties, is active, with a small frame and supple mocha skin that allows her to glide through social circles as an insightful, sexy woman a decade younger. Married for almost two decades, Starla and I have settled into the familiarity of a gloved hand or worn brogans. I think I know her nuances and quirks and she’s certainly familiar with my lecherous crevices. My point, over time and through hard-fought experiences, Starla and I have cultivated an intimacy of routine. Certainly that neglect and my smugness led to the rot in our root cellar.
On the day of Starla’s first piano lesson, the family was in separate corners of the house, riding out the COVID-19 apocalypse. I sat in the TV room completing work on my laptop while Starla sat near the living room piano, waiting to call her tutor.