Most of the kids I taught were brats, very entitled—I didn’t care as long as their parents were paying me to babysit. But there was something about Nev that just broke my heart, this kid so eager to please but simply not connecting in a traditional way to the music. I felt I was robbing his lovely mother. One afternoon I was considering quitting after watching Nev wrestle for the hundredth time with something simple—“Yankee Doodle” or something like that—and Mrs. Charles invited me to stay for lunch. When you’re young and poor, you don’t turn down free food. So I sat at the table with her and
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