At seventy-one, he became the thing his father had wanted him to become at eighteen. His father has been dead for forty years.

This is a story about a seventy-four-year-old man in Sacramento, a specific and unrealized wish his father had for him when he was eighteen, the forty-two-year professional career the man built instead, and the specific three-year private project he undertook, beginning at sixty-eight, to become — very quietly, and very late, and without any expectation that anyone else would find it meaningful — the person his father had once, briefly, hoped he might become.

The man — I will call him Silas, because he chose the name, and because when I asked him why, he said, “It sounds like the name of a person who has spent a long time deciding to do a small specific thing, which is what I am,” which I found accurate — is seventy-four. He is a retired certified public accountant. He worked, from the age of twenty-two until his retirement at sixty-five, at the same mid-sized accounting firm in Sacramento. He was, over the course of his career, well-regarded, promoted to partner in his mid-forties, and consulted on the specific tax situations of a large number of small-to-mid-sized businesses in the greater Sacramento region.

He was, in his own careful account, “very good at what I did.”

He was also, in his own careful account, “not doing what my father, in 1971, had briefly wanted me to do.”

The thing his father had, in 1971, briefly wanted him to do

The thing his father had, in 1971, briefly wanted him to do was become a classical guitarist.

I want to describe the specific circumstances of the wish, because they are the specific thing this story is about.

Silas’s father — whom I will call Hollis, because Silas has told me it is a name Hollis would have liked — was, in 1971, forty-nine years old. He was, at that time, working as a warehouse foreman at a large agricultural products company in the Central Valley of California. He had been at the company for twenty-six years. He had, in his own accounting of it, given up on a specific set of musical ambitions he had held as a young man, in favor of the specific practical demands of raising three children through the postwar economy.

Hollis had, according to Silas, played guitar as a young man. Not professionally. Not, in any strict sense, well. But he had, in his own accounting of it, loved the specific sound of a classical guitar in a way that had, for the entirety of his adult life, remained with him.

Hollis had, in 1970 — when Silas was seventeen — bought Silas a small classical guitar for Christmas.

Silas had, in the six months following, learned to play it.

He had, in his own account, been unusually good at it. He had, in his own account, picked it up faster than his father had expected. He had, in his own account, been able — by the summer of 1971, when he was eighteen and about to leave for college — to play several pieces of intermediate difficulty with a specific and careful attention that his father had, in Silas’s account, “found startling.”

Silas has told me that in the summer of 1971 — specifically, in the second week of July, on a small back porch outside the small house Silas’s family lived in — his father had said the following to him.

His father had said, in Silas’s account: “You could do this, if you wanted to. You could go to a music school. You could — I do not know how these things work, exactly — but you could pursue this specific thing. You are good at it. You could, I think, become good enough at it to make a small kind of life out of it.”

Silas has told me his father then paused.

His father then said: “I am not, in any way, telling you that you should. I am telling you that you could.”

Silas has told me his father then went inside the house.

Silas has told me his father never mentioned the possibility again.

Silas has told me that in September of 1971 — approximately two months after the specific conversation on the back porch — Silas began his freshman year at a mid-sized state university in Northern California, in which he had been enrolled since April, as an accounting major.

He has told me his father drove him to the university. He has told me his father helped him unpack his belongings in his dorm room. He has told me his father, at some point during the unpacking, took Silas’s classical guitar out of the car and placed it in the corner of the dorm room.

He has told me his father, at that point, said: “I brought this. In case.”

He has told me his father then left.

He has told me he did not, in his four years at the university, play the guitar more than approximately eight times.

He has told me that upon graduating in the spring of 1975, he began work at the Sacramento accounting firm where he would spend the rest of his career.

He has told me that on the specific weekend he moved to Sacramento, he placed the guitar in the back of his car. He has told me he did not, in any of the following forty-three years, take it out of the case.

The forty-three years

I want to describe the forty-three years briefly, because they are the specific context for everything else in this story.

Silas met his wife — I will call her Odette — in 1977. They were married in 1979. They had two daughters, in 1982 and 1985. Silas built, over the course of the next thirty-six years, a specific and quiet middle-class life in Sacramento. He commuted to his firm. He rose through the ranks. He coached his daughters’ soccer teams for approximately nine collective seasons. He renovated his kitchen twice, in 1993 and again in 2011. He took his family on approximately fourteen vacations over the years. He was, by his own account, present and involved and — in the specific way of fathers of his generation — attentive.

He did not, in any of those forty-three years, play the guitar.

The guitar sat, in its case, in the back of his and Odette’s closet for approximately thirty of those years. In 2005, during a renovation of the master bedroom, the guitar was moved to a small storage closet in the basement. In 2016, during a decluttering project that Odette had, in her own account, initiated because Silas would not, the guitar was placed on the highest shelf of that closet, behind a set of Christmas decorations, where — Silas has told me — it “was, for all practical purposes, forgotten.”

His father, in the meantime, died in 1986.

Hollis died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-three. He had, in the fifteen years between the specific conversation on the back porch and his death, never mentioned the guitar to Silas. He had never, in any of those fifteen years, asked Silas whether he was still playing. He had never, in any of those fifteen years, referenced the specific summer of 1971 in any way.

He had, at his death, left Silas approximately $8,000 in a small savings account and a small collection of personal effects that Silas had, at the time, gone through carefully.

The personal effects had not included a guitar of any kind. Hollis had, apparently, not owned a guitar himself at the time of his death.

Silas has told me he does not, in his memory, know when his father stopped playing.

He has told me he does not, in his memory, remember his father playing at all after the summer of 1971.

The retirement

Silas retired in May of 2019, at the age of sixty-five.

The retirement was, in his own account, uneventful. He had, in the specific way of accountants who plan carefully for their own retirements, been preparing for it for approximately fifteen years. His firm gave him a small dinner. He was given a specific set of gifts by his colleagues — a nice fountain pen, a small commemorative plaque, and a specific bottle of scotch he did not, in the strict sense, drink. He returned home from the dinner. He took approximately six weeks off. He then, in the specific way of retired accountants, began — over the course of the following two years — to become slowly and mildly restless.

His wife Odette, in her own account (which Silas gave me permission to share, and which I later confirmed in a brief phone conversation with her), told me that in the winter of 2021 — approximately two and a half years into Silas’s retirement — she noticed a specific and quiet change in his behavior.

She has told me: “He had, for the first two years of retirement, been in the specific way of retired men — restless, but ordinarily restless. He was reading more. He was taking long walks. He was, in the specific way of men his age, occasionally reorganizing the garage. In the winter of 2021, I noticed that he had started to do something else. He had started to sit, for extended periods, in the back sunroom of our house, and to look at nothing in particular. He was not reading. He was not on his phone. He was not, in any strict sense, doing anything. He was, in the specific phrasing I would use for it, considering something.”

She has told me: “I did not, at the time, ask him what he was considering. I have, in forty-five years of marriage, learned that Silas, when he is considering something, needs to consider it in his own time. If I ask, he will explain before he has finished considering, and then he will not have considered it properly.”

She has told me: “I let him consider it. I did not ask.”

She has told me: “In the third week of February of 2022, he came into the kitchen while I was making dinner. He said to me: ‘I have decided something. I would like to tell you about it.’ I said okay.”

She has told me: “He then told me that he had decided to try, in a specific and quiet way, to learn to play the classical guitar.”

She has told me: “He was, at that point, sixty-eight years old. He had not played the guitar in fifty years. He did not have a guitar. He had, so far as I knew, no specific reason to want to play the guitar. I said okay. I said, ‘That sounds like a nice thing to do.'”

She has told me: “He did not, at that point, tell me why.”

She has told me: “I did not, at that point, ask.”

She has told me: “I did not know, until approximately eighteen months later, that he had a specific reason. I did not know what the specific reason was until, in the fall of 2024, he told me. I have, since he told me, thought about the specific reason a great deal.”

The three years

I asked Silas, in the course of three phone conversations, to describe the three years between his announcement to Odette in February of 2022 and the specific moment in the summer of 2024 that I will describe later in this article.

He has told me the three years were, in his own careful phrasing, “the most specific and consistent work I had done since I was in college.”

He had, in February of 2022, purchased a small classical guitar from a specific music store in downtown Sacramento. The guitar had cost him approximately six hundred dollars. It was, in his own assessment, a specific mid-range instrument — not a professional’s guitar, but not a beginner’s guitar either. It was, in his own careful phrasing, “the kind of guitar a person who is serious but not a professional would buy.”

He had then, in the following weeks, located a specific classical guitar teacher who worked with adult students. The teacher — whom Silas has asked me not to name, but has told me is a woman in her early forties who has taught classical guitar in Sacramento for approximately eighteen years — agreed to take Silas on as a student. She agreed, in Silas’s account, “with the specific gentle skepticism that I would have expected of a professional teacher being approached by a sixty-eight-year-old man who wanted to learn classical guitar.”

Silas has told me she had, at the first lesson, asked him a specific question that he has since thought about a great deal.

She had asked, in Silas’s account: “Why do you want to do this?”

Silas has told me he had, in that first lesson, given her the most complete answer he had been able to give at the time. He had told her about the specific summer of 1971. He had told her about his father. He had told her that he had, in the fifty years since, thought about the guitar occasionally but had not, until recently, been able to fully articulate to himself why he had not returned to it.

He had told her: “I would like to try to become good enough at this specific instrument that I could, if my father were alive, play something for him that he would recognize as the specific thing he had, in 1971, briefly imagined I might become.”

She had, according to Silas, considered this answer for approximately eleven seconds.

She had then said: “Okay. I will teach you.”

Silas has told me she has, in the three years since, been his teacher.

He has told me she has been, in his phrasing, “exactly the specific teacher that a sixty-eight-year-old man who is trying to become a specific thing needs to be taught by. She has not, in three years, treated me as a hobbyist. She has not, in three years, treated me as if I am doing something charming. She has treated me as a serious student who is trying to learn a specific difficult thing, and she has taught me accordingly. She has been, in some way I cannot fully express gratitude for, the specific person who has made this project possible.”

The daily practice

I asked Silas, in each of our conversations, to describe his daily practice over the three years.

He has told me the practice was, without exception, the following.

He had, from February of 2022, practiced classical guitar for two hours per day, seven days a week, for three years.

He had done this in the back sunroom of his house. He had done it, in his careful description, “from nine to eleven each morning, without deviation, except on three specific days over three years when I was ill enough that I physically could not.”

He had, over the three years, worked through a specific and careful progression of technical exercises, scales, and repertoire. He had, over the three years, learned to play approximately fourteen intermediate pieces. He had, over the three years, developed — in his teacher’s assessment — a specific and consistent tone that his teacher had described to him, in the summer of 2024, as “the specific tone of a serious late-life student who has, in the way that late-life students sometimes do, achieved a specific quality of attention that younger students often lack.”

He had, in his own account, “become a specific kind of amateur classical guitarist. Not, in the professional sense, a good one. But not, in the strict sense, a beginner. I had, over three years, become a person who could play the classical guitar with a specific and consistent care.”

He has told me he has, in three years, played the guitar for exactly one person other than his teacher and Odette.

The one person

The one person was, in Silas’s account, a woman named Beatrice.

Beatrice — Silas has told me — is his older sister. She is, at the time of this writing, seventy-eight years old. She is the only surviving member of Silas’s original family of origin. She lives, at the time of this writing, in a small assisted living community in Bakersfield.

Silas has told me he had, in July of 2024 — the specific month corresponding to the fifty-third anniversary of the specific conversation on the back porch in 1971 — driven the four and a half hours from Sacramento to Bakersfield with his guitar in the back of his car.

He had arrived at his sister’s assisted living community in the afternoon.

He had, in his own account, “greeted my sister in the way I ordinarily do, which is by having a small ordinary conversation with her about her health and the specific state of her medications and the news from her three children.”

He had, at some point in the visit, brought his guitar into her small apartment.

He had, in his own account, “explained to her what I had been doing for the past two and a half years. I explained to her about the guitar. I explained to her about the classical guitar teacher. I explained to her about the specific summer of 1971. I explained to her that I wanted to play a specific piece for her.”

He has told me his sister — who had, apparently, been sitting in her armchair while he was explaining — considered him for approximately fifteen seconds.

She then said, in his account: “You are trying to play the guitar for our father.”

He has told me he said: “Yes.”

He has told me she said: “Our father would want to hear it. I will listen instead.”

He has told me she said: “Please play.”

The piece

The piece Silas played, in his account, was a specific arrangement of a specific classical guitar piece that his teacher had, over the previous eight months, carefully prepared him for. The piece was, in Silas’s careful description, “at the specific upper edge of what I was, at that point, capable of. I had chosen it because it was the specific piece I had, in my own quiet way, been working toward for the entirety of the two and a half years. I had chosen it because I could, on my best days, play it well.”

He has told me he had, before the visit, practiced the piece approximately eleven hundred times.

He has told me he played the piece for his sister in her small apartment on a Tuesday afternoon in July of 2024. He has told me the performance took approximately six minutes and forty seconds. He has told me he made, over the course of the performance, three small errors that a professional guitarist would have noticed but that neither he nor his sister mentioned.

He has told me his sister, in the specific way of an older sister listening to a younger brother, did not — during the performance — take her eyes off him.

He has told me she did not, during the performance, make any facial expression that he could clearly read.

He has told me that when he finished, she sat quietly for approximately fourteen seconds before she said anything.

He has told me she then said: “Silas. Our father would be — I cannot find the specific word. He would be moved. He would be, in the specific way of a father who has been dead for a very long time, moved.”

She then said: “I do not think he ever, at any point, imagined that you would do this.”

She then said: “Thank you for playing it. Thank you for driving here. Thank you for telling me.”

Silas has told me his sister then, in her own account, cried for approximately three minutes.

He has told me he sat with her, in her small apartment, while she cried.

He has told me he then, in his own account, cried for approximately six minutes.

He has told me she sat with him.

He has told me the specific afternoon — the specific set of six minutes and forty seconds of the piece, and the specific set of nine minutes of the crying that followed — has been, in his own careful assessment, “the specific most important afternoon of my adult life.”

He has told me: “I have, in the year since, been trying to understand why.”

What he thinks he was doing

I asked Silas, in our final conversation, what he thinks he was doing.

He has told me he has thought about this a great deal.

He has told me: “I have, in the year since the afternoon in Bakersfield, come to believe that I was not, in the strict sense, doing anything for my father. My father is dead. He has been dead for forty years. He was not, in any sense, in the room. He did not hear the piece. He did not know I had learned it. He did not, at any point in his life, know that I would — decades after his death — go back to the guitar he had bought me for Christmas in 1970 and try to become, in a small careful way, what he had briefly hoped I might become.”

He has told me: “I do not think my father, in the specific practical sense, gained anything from what I did.”

He has told me: “I do, however, think that I did.”

He has told me: “I have come to believe that what I was doing was not, in the strict sense, for my father. What I was doing was for the specific eighteen-year-old version of myself who had, in the summer of 1971, sat on a back porch and listened to his father say the specific words ‘You could do this, if you wanted to.’ I had, at eighteen, understood those words. I had, at eighteen, made a specific decision not to do the specific thing my father was suggesting. I had, at eighteen, made that decision for reasons that were, at the time, entirely reasonable — I had already been accepted to college as an accounting major, I was ready to begin the specific practical life I had been raised to live, and I did not, in the strict sense, want to become a classical guitarist.”

He has told me: “But I had, at eighteen, been very good at the guitar. I had, at eighteen, been in the specific position of being able to become good at it if I had wanted to. I had chosen not to. I had, in the fifty years since, occasionally thought about the choice. I had never, in the fifty years, done anything about it.”

He has told me: “What I was doing, in the three years I studied classical guitar, was going back to the specific eighteen-year-old version of myself and — in the specific way that adults can sometimes do for their younger selves — completing something that eighteen-year-old had, without knowing it, left incomplete.”

He has told me: “I was not doing this for my father. I was doing this for myself. My father was, in some quiet way, the person who had originally noticed what I could do. My father was, in some quiet way, the person who had — without pressuring me — given me permission to consider a specific path I had chosen not to take. My father was, in the specific way of parents who have been dead for many years, still the specific witness in whose imagined attention the specific choice mattered.”

He has told me: “I was going back, in some way I cannot fully articulate, to be, at seventy-one, the specific thing my father had, at forty-nine, briefly and quietly imagined I could be.”

He has told me: “I was doing it because I wanted to know if I could.”

He has told me: “I can. And I have.”

He has told me: “This is, at seventy-four, the specific thing I am most quietly proud of.”

What he plans to do now

I asked Silas, in our final conversation, what he plans to do now.

He has told me he plans to continue playing the guitar for the specific remainder of his life. He plans to continue his weekly lessons with his teacher. He plans to continue his daily two-hour practice. He plans, at some point in the coming year, to attempt a piece that is at the specific outer edge of what he believes he might be capable of.

He has told me he does not, at seventy-four, expect to become significantly better than he currently is. He has told me he expects, at some point, to plateau. He has told me he expects that at some point after that, the specific physical dexterity required by classical guitar will begin, in the specific way of aging hands, to slowly decline. He has told me he has, in his own careful accounting, “approximately eight to twelve good years before the guitar will become physically difficult for me to play well.”

He has told me he plans to use those years.

He has told me: “I have decided that this is the specific late-life project that I am going to do. I do not need it to make me famous. I do not need it to make me money. I do not need it to be shared with any audience beyond the specific audience of my sister, and my wife, and my teacher, and — for approximately six minutes and forty seconds every so often — the specific quiet imagined attention of my dead father.”

He has told me: “I have decided that this is, for me, enough.”

What this is

I have, in the weeks since I first heard this story, thought about the specific quiet ways that some people, very late in their lives, decide to become the specific person that some earlier version of themselves might have — in a different set of circumstances — become. Silas did not, in any ordinary sense, need to spend three years learning classical guitar. Silas had a full and rich professional life, a happy marriage, two accomplished daughters, and a comfortable retirement. Silas was, by any reasonable measure, a person who had lived well. Silas did not, in the strict sense, have anything to prove.

Silas, however, had, in the specific quiet way that some people carry small unfinished things across the decades of their lives, been carrying — for fifty years — a specific unresolved question about who he might have become if he had, in the summer of 1971, made a different choice. He had, at sixty-eight, decided to answer the question. He had, at seventy-one, answered it.

I do not know exactly what to make of this. I think it is, in the specific way of the small late-life projects that certain people undertake without needing anyone to know about them, extraordinary. I think it is, in the specific way of the small late-life projects that resolve — finally, in some quiet form — questions that have been carried for decades, a specific kind of small miracle. (For a related earlier piece on the specific ways that certain people, later in their lives, decide to become the specific thing they had, without meaning to, been quietly practicing for their entire adult lives, see the Wattalife story about the 79-year-old woman in Milwaukee who, after her husband died, discovered she had — over fifty-four years of marriage — absorbed the specific comedic architecture required to become a working stand-up comedian.)

Silas told me, at the end of our final conversation, that he had, the previous morning, played through the specific piece he had performed for his sister in Bakersfield.

He had, in his own account, played it in his back sunroom. He had played it for no audience. He had played it, in his own careful phrasing, “for the specific version of my father who has, over the past three years, become the specific quiet witness of the specific thing I have been doing.”

He has told me he does not believe his father was, in the strict sense, listening.

He has told me he plays it anyway.

He has told me he plans to play it, at least once a week, for the specific remainder of his life.

He has told me: “This is, I have decided, one of the specific things I would like to be doing when I die.”

—

Margot Hale is the editor of Wattalife. She has, since reporting this story, been considering the specific small unresolved questions from her own eighteenth year that she has been carrying, without answering, for the entirety of her adult life. She has identified two of them. She has decided, tentatively, to consider whether either of them can, in some specific late-life form, be answered. She has not yet decided. She is, however, considering.