Dayton, Ohio, has many wonderful cultural attractions, including the United States Air Force Museum and the state-of-the-art Schuster Center, but perhaps most influential in my early formation was 88.1 FM, the 24/7 classical music station. We would spend hours listening to it as Mom shuttled us to and from various activities, which meant we all preferred her music to my dad’s oldies station — sorry, Dad! It was used to soothe crying babies to sleep, and it now plays constantly on an ancient boombox in Sibling No. 7’s room. (This sibling now has a highly cultured turtle — appropriate for an animal named Clarence Thomas.) The radio hosts became like old friends, their voices as familiar to us as our parents’, and the strains of everything from Beethoven to Tchaikovsky to Satie were always floating around.
This early musical education had many effects on our family life, and a particularly special one for me is how it’s connecting me now with my brother, even though we live almost 2,500 miles apart.
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