Our Little Free Concert

My kids, nine and eleven, play violin and cello. They're not great yet. But they love to practice on our front porch on summer evenings.

At first it was just us listening. Then a neighbor started bringing a lawn chair. Then another. By July, there were ten or twelve people on our lawn every Friday evening, with chairs and lemonade and sometimes popcorn.

The kids took it seriously. They made programs out of printer paper. They practiced new songs all week. They bowed at the end of every piece. Our neighbors clapped like it was Carnegie Hall.

At the last concert in August, an old man who'd come every week stood up and said that he'd played cello for fifty years and that my son had a "beautiful bow arm." My son glowed for a week. They're practicing for next summer.