The bestest gift went to my mother. My father, my brother and myself picked up a keyboard for her.

See, there's a story here. My mother got her college degree in music education quite a few years ago. She went on to teach third and fourth grade for a few decades, retiring only last year.

While I was growing up, we had a piano in the basement. Every so often, my mom would go downstairs and play it. Generally, only when she thought no one else was around. I'm not sure as to why when no one else was there; maybe she didn't feel comfortable playing around others, maybe it was just for herself, I really don't know. In any case, it was an occasional thing, but sometimes I would come home and hear her playing some Mozart or a Bach piece.

About ten years ago, my folks got rid of the upright piano. It took up too much space, it was expensive to maintain it, the wood was starting to warp, etc. Ever since then, both my brother and I would say that she should get a keyboard, on the basis that if it was a big enough a part of her life to study it for four years in her youth, it's probably something that she might like to try again.

Well, earlier this year, she made an offhand comment to my father about how it might be nice to have a keyboard. So, Dad asked Mike and I to pick one up for him.

When we brought it out to her on Christmas, she was so surprised that she was completely speechless for a bit. After Mike walked her through some of the features of the keyboard, she started to play Moonlight Sonata — from memory! There were a few wrong notes, but it was far better than I could have done.

Later on, she was working through the accompaniment part of the keyboard's programming. Built into the machine out of the box is Norah Jones' Don't Know Why, complete with score and lyrics. It just happens to be the first tune in the song catalog. My mom picked up the tune and sight read the music (at about 90% accuracy) on the very first try, without having played piano for 10 years and not being all that familiar with the song.

That's just simply impressive as all get out.

Merry Christmas again, mom.