The boys, looking almost like twins, bounced along the row in time with the music, huge grins on their faces. Their father smiled, patting them on the shoulder.

I was startled at first to see the boys so excited about a Grateful Dead cover band. You don’t usually see children at a Dead cover band. But the concert was supposed to be outside, and the threat of thunderstorms had forced everyone inside. And of course you take children to outdoor concerts.

We used to take our children to outdoor concerts. Our children also looked almost like twins. They never bounced in time with the music or grinned from ear to ear. But they loved the concerts—almost as much as they loved music itself.

On his second birthday, our older son got a toy red Fender guitar. He’d been using hairbrushes and anything he could find around the house to play guitar, so it wasn’t hard to figure out what he might like for his birthday. I’ll never forget the grin on his face with those bright blue eyes and the way he swayed his little hips with the guitar strap over his shoulder.

This is the child who sang a song in the backseat of the car and then stopped. He picked it up again and then stopped a second time. When I kept singing, he interrupted, “Mom, it’s loading.”

When songs came on the radio, he would comment in amazement, “Can you hear the saxophone in there?” When I was an extra in an opera, he surprised the babysitter by telling her that the pause in the music was where someone got shot.

Over time, the boys got more musical instruments, including a toy acoustic guitar. Before every outdoor concert, he’d ask, “Mom, which guitar should I bring?”

He’d watch the band set up, strum along in perfect rhythm, and before long the musicians began noticing him. One evening Kelly Bell waved him onto the stage to play beside the band, then signed his guitar and handed him a bobblehead.

Meanwhile, our younger son didn’t dance either. He listened—sometimes standing perfectly still, sometimes wandering the lawn before returning to the music.

Today, the younger one still listens intently to music. As we start a car ride, he’ll ask, “Mom, would you like to listen to music?” He loves social commentary in song lyrics, The Odyssey retold through Epic: The Musical, a digital‑first production, and the orchestral scores from video games. Every song comes with an invitation:

“I’d like you to hear this piece. How do you interpret the lyrics?”

“Did you know this piece will never be performed live?”

“Isn’t this peaceful?”

The boys kept grinning and dancing, wearing their matching tie-dyed T-shirts. As I watched those boys, remembering mine, I smiled. Music had found them all.