I’ll try to keep this short.

I bought a guitar. On impulse. I don’t know how to play the guitar. As a classical snob, I’ve always looked down on guitarists. But my broken cello remains broken for the time being, and ever since I’ve been itching to play music. Then my husband surprised me by taking me to Guitar Center.

He was actually there to pick up some electrical equipment, but my eyes filled with the guitars. Lines and grids and matrices of guitars, of all sorts and shapes and colors. Naturally I drifted to the acoustic section.

“Maybe I’ll get a cheap ukulele?” I tell my husband.

I find one cute ukulele, with a beautiful pattern.

“But what do you want this for?” my husband asked.

I thought. What was missing? Was this hope? “I want to make music, any music I want. I want us to start our band again,” I said.

“You want a guitar,” he said.

So I got a guitar. Because I’m a cellist, I picked one with an especially warm tone, almost all mahogany.

Moving to Seattle meant changing jobs, it meant changing careers, friends, food, standard of living, weather, everything. Might as well go with the tide. They say to avoid drowning, you follow the flow of the water.

“I want this one,” I said.