Lately I’ve been thinking about how awesome it is that my parents made sure I got music lessons as a kid. I’ve only started truly to appreciate that.

Yes, it’s great that they sacrificed time and money for me to take piano and clarinet and to be in marching band and choir. But that’s not the amazing part.

The amazing part, to me, is that they did all this even though they are not musicians themselves.

You see, lately I have realized how rare that actually is.

Musician parents usually give their kids the tools to become musicians, too.

But I’ve seen that non-musician parents often don’t think to give their kids music lessons. Sure, these parents like and appreciate music, but they figure that their kids will just like and appreciate music, too. The thought doesn’t occur that the kids could actually BE musicians.

My parents fall into the “like and appreciate music” category. They both like music (and my dad did some music-y stuff in high school), but to my knowledge, they never did much music-related stuff as adults, except singing around the house occasionally.

So how amazing and awesome it is that they made music lessons for me a priority when they saw that I was interested. Thanks, Mom and Dad!