This past year in the studio, there was a marked increase in pets—I’ve met a guinea pig named Clementine, an entire basket of kittens, Allison’s snow-white puppy, a Great Pyrenees that seems to grow 20 pounds each week, and an additional handful of pending puppy “maybe’s” from worn-out parents who we all expected to cave any day now. My dreams for my own quarantine pet (a hedgehog named “Sharps”) have also recently been approved by the most vocal 8-year-olds in the studio…I expect I’ll cave any day now.

I’ve met my students’ siblings (and twins!), nannies, grandparents, baby brothers, and kids from next door. I’ve witnessed amazing Halloween costumes and freshly carved pumpkins and two contested “tallest Christmas trees in the entire world.” I’ve met the children of my adult students and admired lego creations and been introduced to the newest Elf on the Shelf. I’ve seen the new colors of bedrooms and pictures drawn earlier that morning and held on to the Holidays with Revelle well past January. I’ve celebrated entrances into The Mountain School and SODA by Isabella and Zoe. I’ve accompanied students to Malibu and Tahoe and back no fewer than a dozen times this past year, sometimes to cabins at the Lake, and more recently with Amelie, who rushed off the slopes each week with cheeks glowing and nose still red to get to lessons on time and show me her new ideas for the song we were writing together. It’s been a whirlwind of lessons in New York, LA, Switzerland, and Jamaica all on the same day.

Without fail, at Charlie and Poppy’s lessons, I will look up at least once to see nothing but a pair of feet where their heads were moments earlier. The fastest note reader in my studio is Siena (12.07 sec!!), and Ahimsa holds what I assume must be the record for the number of feet that any child has ever launched himself from a bed and landed on his feet. We have celebrated simple triumphs like lessons with “double screens” and good internet and played Better Together more times than I can count and mic-dropped with style and dreamed about all the bands we will form and open mics we will play when this pandemic is over :) The year has been full of tutorial videos, collaborations, laughter, and celebratory hip-hop dances. I’ve been surprised by flowers, cards, and little bobbles that keep showing up in the mail, and can’t stop smiling at all the pictures I get of you playing your ukulele on vacation. Thank you for cheering on my football team in the Superbowl when yours didn’t make it, for being cool enough to know how to code video games and do Rubix cubes in record time, and for sharing your favorite songs with me so I could love them too.

Thank you for singing for me even when you were afraid your voice might not be any good (though, of course, it was), and for trying all the things you were certain would be “too hard,” and mastering them. Thank you for beginning to believe in yourself enough to take up space with your voice and for realizing, with time, that you deserved that space all along. Thank you for your endearing candor in your interpretations of my dreams (“Sounds like you are scared of growing old”) and for innocently pestering me with the same questions as my mother (“But Miss Willa…how come you aren’t married?”). Thank you for your enthusiasm and jokes and for surprising me with memorized songs and new lyrics. Switzerland will be lucky to have you, and I’m glad I’ll get to come along. I have watched in admiration as you save the world by day and sing Moon River by night and play the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata at a dizzying spread and tackle every new challenge with glee. You’ve shared your all-around good vibes and Hawaii afterglows, and taught me what I deserved from life, and I marvel at what a gift you are to the world.

The lockdown has shown me in new and beautiful ways that there is no vacuum or separate space in which music is nurtured and created, it is the compilation of ALL of these things that form our life. It IS connection itself. I was unsure what to expect from this year of online learning, but you have proven that it can work wonderfully and have surpassed the progress I have seen from my in-person teaching. Thank you for trusting in my ability to navigate this and to figure out how to help you thrive. This studio has become everything I dreamed it would be; you are a most irreplaceable part of it. My pride in you and what you’ve accomplished is endless. There is not a star big enough to award for all your song creations and melodies or for the way you are learning to make your instrument sing.

Here’s to another year of music with you, come what may.