'A better time than any': Finding joy in music lessons, jams By TRACEE M. HERBAUGH 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. It had been 30 years. The grand staff was a foreign language and the only key I could recognize was middle C.