A Difference of 65 Years!

So today is my birthday and I turned 69!  Ah.......the "last year of my 60's".........next year I'll be really old.   ugh.   I spent part of the afternoon playing songs on my new organ in the living room.  Old pop tunes from the 40's, 50's, and 60's.   While going through some old photographs today I found one of me playing the piano when I was about 4 1/2 years old - about 65 years ago!  Even back then I was playing keyboards!  I remember that little toy piano well.   I played that thing almost into oblivion.   Today I am still playing a piano, as well as my accordion, the organ and the psaltery.  Music has always been a big part of my life, and I am so thankful that my parents paid for many years of music lessons for me.   I'm sure there were some times when it must have been a little tough to come up with money for those lessons at the Imperial Accordion Studio in South Bend Indiana back in the late 1950's.   I took lessons there until I was a sophomore in high school.   Then about 1963, the accordion became a very unpopular instrument in this country, so when my sister took organ lessons I tried to play that, too, more or less self-taught.  Playing the organ was so much more "cool", you know?  When I got to college I took a couple years of organ study and also later in life took some private organ lessons from a fellow at a church I belonged to in Rhode Island at that time.   Much later in years, I took a couple more years of organ study at Mankato State Univ.   Years of playing organ in churches sharpened my organ skills, as I was a church organist for almost 27 years. 
     I never put down the accordion, though, and continued to play at nursing homes, and for a while in a polka band as well as just for my own pleasure.   About 10 years ago I got a piano for free and started fooling around with that.  Although I'm no pro at the piano, for a self taught gal I don't do half bad and have learned 9 pieces of music by heart so I can play without music for at least a little while!
     A good friend bought me a psaltery back around 2000 and I took a couple lessons on that and then taught myself to play further.   A psaltery works on basically a keyboard principle but is played with a bow.  
     Today I play all 4 instruments from time to time at church for music specials, and also at nursing homes and community events.   I am so thankful that I kept up my music skills over the years!  Music brings me so much pleasure and is a good "de-stresser" in this crazy world we live in.  
     So, here I am at age 4 1/2 at my toy piano: 

And here I am 65 years later as an old woman of 69, still playing a keyboard instrument (my new Baldwin organ):

Happy birthday to me - and I hope that I'll be able to play music for many, many more years yet!