From my second grade on, there was one event I feared every year: the piano recital(独奏演唱会). A recital 1I had to practice a boring piece of music and perform before strangers. Each year I 2ask my father if I could skip the recital “just this once”. And each year he would shake his head, muttering(嘀咕)3about build self-confidence and working toward a 4.

    So it was with really great5that I stood in church one recent Sunday, video camera in hand, and 6my 68-year-old father sweating in his shirt 7rising to play the piano in his very first recital.

    My father had longed to play music since childhood, but his family was poor and couldn't 8lessons. He could have gone on regretting it,9too many of us do. But though he was rooted in his past, he wasn't 10there. When he retired three years ago, he 11 his church music director to take him as a student.

    For a moment after my father sat down at the keyboard, he 12stared down at his fingers. Has he forgotten the 13? I worried, remembering those split seconds14ago when my mind would go blank and my fingers would 15. But then came the beautiful melody(旋律)，from the 16fingers that once baited(装饵于) my fishing lines. And I17he had been doing what music teachers always stress:18the music and pretend the others aren't there.

     “I'm 19of him for starting something new at his age,” I said to my son Jeff.

    “Yeah, and doing it so20,” Jeff added.

    With his first recital, my father taught me more about courage and determination than all the words he used those 30-plus years ago.