Photo: My dad playing guitar, sitting next to my brother. That’s me on the right.

My father is a singer-songwriter. When I was little, he toured with a songwriters’ group I have since forgotten the name of. Folk singers, I think. Well, it was the ’70s, so that’s a good guess.

Back then, we lived in a two-story, concrete block house with wooden floors and walls, and an iron-railed balcony perched atop the downstairs porch. Mom never would let us go out on that balcony. Too unstable, she said. I always thought that was a shame. My little girl imagination dreamed up quite a few dragons and princesses and knights in shining armor while pondering that balcony.

The upstairs contained three bedrooms and a bathroom. My parents had one room, my brother another, and I shared a bedroom with my little sister, the baby of the family.

Dad knew a ton of musicians back then. They came and went with surprising regularity, and we kids were often kicked out of our beds onto the sleeper-sofa so those guests would have a place to sleep.

When I share that story, of my dad the traveling songwriter and the musicians streaming in and out of our house, it provokes a surprising sense of wonder and envy in others. “What an interesting childhood you had,” some say.

In a way, I suppose that’s right, but music was so intrinsicly woven into the fabric of our lives, we never questioned it.

At the grand age of nine years, my parents bought me my first guitar (classical) and started sending me to lessons with my elementary school music teacher, Ms. Hubbard. Ms. Hubbard lived in a second-story apartment at the bottom of the hill from us.

Now, when I say hill, I really mean a small mountain. We lived in the second or third house from the top and it was a long way down along a narrow, curvy, paved road barely wide enough for two vehicles. When it snowed (and it did), we often had to park halfway up and walk the rest of the way home carrying bookbags and groceries and such. For a school-aged child, it might as well have been an hour’s drive. In reality, I doubt it’s much more than half a mile from top to bottom.

Every week, my parents would drop me off at Ms. Hubbard’s, and every week, I would dutifully learn another song. The one I remember most is “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor.” It had two chords, C and D minor, and every verse was simple and repetitive. Easy pickings for a beginning student whose uncle had enlisted in the Navy.

I can still play that song, by the way, though I can only remember two of the verses.

Ms. Hubbard also taught lessons on the upright piano pushed against one wall of her living room. She cottoned onto my fascination with her piano and taught me where middle C was located along the long expanse of ivory and black keys. I gave up on the guitar, moved on (eventually) to the flute, the oboe, and percussion in high school, and somewhere in between spent glorious hour upon hour banging away on the ancient piano situated in the hallway behind my paternal grandmother’s living room.

Somewhere in there, another event occurred that inspired me in a way my parents never expected: My father gave up the musician’s life in favor of a stable job selling insurance so he could provide for his wife and kids. It was a sensible thing to do, practical in the way of mountain folk, and perfectly in line with his raising.

But it was hard for him to give up that dream. When it came time for me to choose what path I would take as a writer, I determined to never give up as much of my own dream as my father had, that I would always make at least a little time for writing, the way he had done for music, so the sacrifices (and there have been sacrifices) would sting a little less.

I never fully gave up on music, but I never embraced it the way Dad wanted me to. I think he wanted me to follow in his footsteps, to breathe life into the songs I wrote and perform them in front of a live audience, and while I love setting stories to music, it’s not my passion the way it has always been his.

Still, the music is there playing quietly in the back of my mind as I tap away at my laptop’s keyboard, hammering out stories in my own way, through the written word rather than the musical one.

It’s this part of me, this hidden aspect, that drove me to begin sharing some of my favorite songs on Facebook. Morning Music, I call it in my mind, a way to start the day off right, with a song in the heart and the mind. Since I began posting Morning Music there, I’ve had to miss a few mornings thanks to an incredibly hectic schedule, but normally a new Morning Music is posted each day at seven a.m. Eastern Time.

If you have suggestions for songs to share, feel free to post a comment here or on my Facebook page.

Make good music and carry it in your heart all the day long.