When I first stepped into Fred's parlor for piano lessons six years ago, I was looking for a challenge. As it would turn out, I got much more.

I wanted to learn piano. He was a piano teacher. I was 30. He was 88.

Short and fit with white, wavy hair and neatly trimmed mustache, he clasped his hands to his chest, flashed me a playful smile and shuttled me toward his music room as if we were off on some great adventure.

There was a bounce to his step, a bop even. I was taken with this combination of old and exuberant.

I remember sitting next to Fred on his piano bench and flapping my left hand around. "You need to show me what to do with this hand. It doesn't work. It's broken!"

He tilted back his head and let out a fabulous giggle. I felt like I had just nailed a comedy club audition.

We talked a lot that first day. I told him about my job and my children. I explained that I could play the flute pretty well but regretted dropping piano lessons when I was 10.

I admitted I couldn't read a bass clef to save my life.

I did not mention my unhappiness. One friend called it a mid-career crisis. Looking back on it six years later, I think I was disenchanted.

So instead, I returned Fred's playful smile and told him I loved music. Not just listening to it, but playing it. I'm not sure I ever told anyone that before. He said loving music was beautiful.

I believed him.

As the weeks went by, I learned how to read the bass clef with Fred sitting beside me, clapping his hands when I got it right and giggling at my off-color language when I didn't.

As we became friends, he'd lean toward me on his piano bench, blue eyes twinkling, and praise the grade school kids he taught French to as a volunteer. Or he'd talk about how much he enjoyed playing the organ at church. How busy he was helping his daughter's civic club with its annual musical.

He'd grin and say how much fun it was playing for the "old folks" at a local nursing home every week. I'd laugh and shake my head at his joke. He was older than a lot of the residents he entertained.

He peppered our talks with words like delightful and wonderful. At every turn, Fred told me how smart I was for learning the piano so fast. My playing was splendid. I was wonderful, he'd say.

And I believed him.

One day Fred asked me to bring my flute. He gave me an accompaniment book and we played together not as student and teacher, but as friends who loved music and enjoyed making it together.

He asked me to learn a piece he loved, "Sheep May Safely Graze." It was hard, but I learned it for Fred.

He asked me to accompany him at the church where he played the organ. I could pick the songs, he said, beaming. I had terrible stage fright, but I did it for Fred.

When macular degeneration began stealing his eyesight, Fred would ask me to read music for him and fetch sheet music out of cabinets. I did it all, but I knew our time together was nearing an end.

After I moved to the other end of the valley and got caught up in the whirlwind of life, phone calls replaced lessons. And finally, the phone calls stopped. Fred and I lost touch.

Two weeks ago, I stumbled across the accompaniment book he gave me. I got out my flute and played Pachebel's Canon in D as the piano accompaniment filled my head. Fred and I had never played this piece together, but I found myself wishing we had.

It had been four years since we last talked, far too long given Fred's age. I missed him, and I promised myself that I'd call him.

I needed to thank him for teaching me how to read a bass clef and how to embrace the things I love. I wanted to tell him how important he was to me. How he brought joy to my life at just the right time.

I wanted to let him know I'm still playing the piano and that I think life really is delightful and wonderful, too.

I read later that Fred died the same day I found his accompaniment book.

The obituary said all of the things I knew it would. That Fred loved life and music and people. It said that even though he was nearly blind and couldn't walk very well anymore, at age 94 he still taught French to grade school kids as recently as April.

I cried over all the things I had left unsaid.

Before long, though, I was smiling through my tears as I thought about all the times I've sat next to my 7-year-old son on our piano bench at home.

"Mom, would you teach me how to play a song?"

"Sure," I always say.

And there we sit, two lovers of music, his fingers mirroring mine. I clap my hands when he gets it right and I giggle at his scowls when he doesn't.

I tell him how smart he is for learning to play the piano so fast. That his playing is splendid. I tell him he's wonderful.

And he looks up, blue eyes twinkling, and I know he believes me.