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Foyne MahaffeyI've always loved cellos.

They look beautiful and so do the people who play them no matter what their appearance while on break. Player and instrument, the two become one. The way a player has to drape around his or her cello makes it clear that they are a couple.

I have always been especially drawn to slow, deep pieces full of break-ups and job loss. Cello and angst to me equal one perfect evening. It's the vibrato, the shaking left hand heartbeat, that gives it soul and sex appeal,capable of taking us on winding mental journeys.

It looked so easy and natural. Well It's not and it's not and I have a whole new respect for the art of vibrato. This time based on experience.

I played winds my whole life and it's really tough to wrap your legs around a flute or hug a clarinet from the back while you're playing it. Cello lines are curved to match the human body, and they are Renoirs as they lean back on you probably thinking about how lucky they are. A cello smells like wood, or at least varnish, and has a softer feel than the hard linear metal of a flute, but even clarinets that are made of wood are constructed with rings or metal keys between your skin and the instrument at every point of contact. Clearly, you're not welcome except to provide air. Kandinskys.

The size of a cello is perfect, too. It's not so small that you feel like you have to baby it, but not so big it intimidates a student the way stand up basses do. A short person has never even considered a bass. To me, basses are the coolest by far, but big and scary and look like something that should be leashed. Cellos welcome your caress.

Upon my retirement, I decided to keep my mind active. Tutoring involved people, as did volunteer work, tour groups or taking classes. After 34 years of being with 25-40 kids all day every day, solitary activity was more up my alley, so I decided to do something I had always wanted to do and that was to learn to play a cello.

I got pigeon-holed into woodwinds at an early age when all I could take at school was a little plastic recorder like instrument that was called a saxette. It was a gateway instrument ultimately leading to hard-core clarinet use in the high school marching band. They needed players for football games, and tight ends had nothing to do with it.

Don't get me wrong. I love my woodwinds, and play them still. They've been great to me through the years, automatically providing passionate peer groups and talented friends and I do have an emotional attachment to my Armstrong open hole flute which was lugged gig to gig when I was trying to be Jethro Tull. Playing while balancing on one leg is not easy. Woodwinds certainly can provide the same sort of emotional expression that cellos do, but you can't cry and play at the same time.

So here I am, retired and the proud owner of a cello. I've been taking lessons at a local LA music store with an absolutely gifted young guy half my age who is not only a fantastic player but an unusually good teacher.

I am excited about going to lessons every Saturday. It's therapy, only with a cello between your knees. There you face your insecurities, fears of embarrassment and failure. You are attempting things that are hard and confusing and sometimes you want to run out of the room.

For people who have already lived a successful professional life, feeling like an idiot may be new. Hopefully you'll have a teacher who remembers what it was like at the beginning. I'm lucky. This kid I'm learning from is an absolute master teacher. I would have quit many times over had he not had understood what a teacher is supposed to do.

Sure, I've left a lesson or two on the verge of tears, feeling so frustrated at the slow pace of my improvement. After all, my biological clock is ticking and the reality is I'll probably not live long enough to ever get as good as I want to be or even play a recognizable song.

Luckily there are those other times. Days when I feel like I am doing pretty well, and still quite capable of learning, which at my age can be very reassuring.

Weekly lessons have given me something to work toward, something to do with my time that doesn't leave me feeling guilty the way binge watching "Project Runway" would. I have always taken lessons to simply learn how to play the instrument in my hand at the time - guitar, flute, clarinet and piano. That's why I started cello, but that is not entirely why I continue.

I know I'll never be great, maybe not even good, but I am doing something I have wanted to do since I was young, trying something new and difficult and humbling. I will continue to go to my lessons and practice hard until I can play rings around the hundreds of 7-year-old Japanese kids working out of the same books I am. Like I said, humbling, but totally worth it.

Find a good teacher and learn to do that thing you say after the phrase, "I've always wanted to...

- Foyne Mahaffey

Foyne Mahaffey, co-author of In Motherwords, Unconventional Wisdom For Mothers Raising Daughters, has been a teacher, singer, comedienne, lyricist and writer for stories in Utne Reader, ReThinking Schools, Educational Leadership and the blog, "Bohemian Rhapsody," in Northshore Lifestyle. On her blog, she posts humorous pieces about contemporary life and other craziness. The blog has been hit on more than 5,000 times, substantially passing the number of times Ms. Mahaffey has been hit on herself. She currently lives in Los Angeles where she is hoarding water and waiting for earthquakes.

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