A smile has just come unbidden to my face.

I’ve been on the computer for a few hours now, and I’m just wrapping it up. As I get up to go to the kitchen for a glass of milk, my eyes light on an old "Phone Mate" answering machine on the desk top.  My eleven year old daughter, Erin, brought it in a few hours ago. She had asked me earlier if I had a tape recorder and I had said “no”, to which she replied “Sure you do, I think I know where it is.” Moments later she returned with the Phone Mate.

I had been too wrapped up in my work at the time to realize what had actually occurred. Erin had discovered music! And not just discovered it - she’s captivated by it! In my mind now, I look at what has occurred with a closer scrutiny, and start to see how music moves her and how she relates to it.

As I look back over the last couple of months, and last evening in particular, the pieces all fall into place. I’ve become gradually aware that Erin is listening to music more and more - her CDs, the radio. She will fixate on a particular song and play it ad infinitum .. ad nauseam. I’ll hear her at night with her headphones on singing along with Joan Osborne, Alanis Morisset, Enya. But earlier today,  ...

 ...    As I drive up the driveway and get out of the car, I see her sitting in the garage putting on her rollerblades, headset on - singing to a vaguely familiar song. She greets me cheerfully and informs me “Hey dad, guess what? I'm recording some songs on tape. Joan Osborne and Enya and Alanis Morisset - all on the same tape!”  Later, before dinner - “I can’t help right now dad, I’m recording a song.”  Still later - dinnertime, “Just a couple more minutes. This song's almost done.”  She sings along as I head back to the kitchen.

As we eat, she informs me that hip huggers are back in style. "Even bell bottoms! But they call them hip grabbers nowadays."

After dinner is when she asks me about the tape recorder.  She’s been using the CD/Tape deck combo in her room to transfer the music to tape, but now she wants to record herself as she sings along. She tells me that her friend Warren has been doing it for a while now. Unfortunately, I don’t have the setup that can handle it. That was when she dug up the old Phone Mate.

Before she went to bed, Erin came in and asked if I thought she had a pretty voice. She does, and I told her so. Someday, she informs me, she wants to go to where people sing and judges listen to you. She says that she wants to win a contest and record some music and be a star like Joan Osborne.

The little frisson of synapses in my brain that were triggered by the answer machine, suddenly pulled all the little pieces together. My spontaneous smile was like a curtain being lifted on a set piece stage that I could intimately relate to. A small panoply on the stage of Erin's life, instantly revealed to me.

Now, as I look at the Phone Mate on the desk, I’m taken back to the summer of 1963. I’m 12 years old. There’s an ancient Kay f-hole guitar in my hands. I’ve been working on "Red River Valley" for 45 minutes now and my fingers ache. In the other room, a song by a new group called "the Beatles" comes on the radio - and my world suddenly stands still.

To say that I’m electrified is an understatement. Metamorphosized is the only word that seems adequate to fill the bill. I’m not even sure I know what it means, but it's big and sounds grand, and at that moment, my whole world comes to a dead stop ... and takes a 90 degree turn.

I change chords and start marching to a new drummer.

What a fascinating time in Erin’s life. What a remarkable thing is occurring! She’s just on the cusp of it, and I can feel the reverberations of that same discovery that riveted me over 30 years earlier.

I’m going to look more closely - get more involved.  Hey! I’ve been down that road before.  And I’d love to go down it again - with you Erin.

Come on, I’ll walk along with you.

"I want to hold your hand."