Piano lessons, brought to you by Steve Jobs

Fun fact about Amanda: when I was a cadet at West Point, I got to play a duet on the piano with Billy Joel. It might have been just Heart & Soul, but years of piano lessons made that possible. And I received those years of piano lessons courtesy of my mom, who has now been teaching piano for over 40 years.

Since my brother moved back to Texas, he's close enough that my mom sees my niece almost every weekend. With that convenience, she began teaching my niece, keeping the family tradition of everyone-must-play alive. Unfortunately, the 9 hour drive from Spring to Fayetteville kept us from taking advantage of the same set up, and our budget (and available parenting energy, frankly) kept us from getting John and Caroline signed up for lessons here.

Enter Steve Jobs. Or, more accurately, the iPad.

I am so fortunate that my job provides one to me, and just recently, my dad gave one to my mom. It took a couple of false starts, but we have mastered the genius app FaceTime, and we now have weekly piano lessons.

How does that work, you ask?

Exactly like you would think. It's truly the next best thing to being there in person.

I am grateful to all of the bright minds at Apple. My kids don't see nearly enough of their grandparents, and selfishly, I don't see nearly enough of my parents. I can remember as a kid thinking, "how cool would a TV phone be?!" while watching Knight Rider and Buck Rogers. That was the stuff of a far off future when we all drove spaceships and kept our hover packs in the closet next to our moon boots.

I don't have that spaceship, and moon boots are sadly absent from my house. But I do have kids that are starting to learn how to play the piano, learning from a teacher who lives over 500 miles away. Can't say I imagined that in my wildest dreams.