40Below: Tickling the ivories with 2 Tees

When I saw a Facebook video, I knew I had to write about these Eugene siblings

Nathanael and Adia Tee in front of the piano at which they spend much time.

Editor’s note: As a POAY — Person of Advanced Years — I too often write about people of a similar age. To compensate, I occasionally like to write about young people in what I call “40Below” stories. The two siblings in this column, 13 and 10, represent the youngest people I’ve written about since starting Heart, Humor & Hope in January 2024.

WHEN I TURNED 40 eons ago, I bought myself a guitar to slow down my life and create time for peace and relaxation.

No deadlines. No pressure. No expectations.

The idea flopped. Six months later, I sold the guitar at a garage sale for $25.

Some people can learn instruments, languages and other stuff that requires instant memorization. I am not one of them.

At the University of Oregon, I quit my basic Spanish class and shifted my pursuit from a Bachelor of Arts degree to a Bachelor of Science degree because on Day Two I had to role-play an airport scene in which I was to say “Hello, my name is Robert Scott.” Despite studying for hours the previous night, I botched it. I knew I could never pass that class or any other class that required such rote memory. I just am not wired that way.

In Haiti, on a medical team in the 1980s, I couldn’t understand why patients kept laughing when I asked them, in Creole, to please take a seat — until a team member whispered that I was asking them to take an outhouse.

So you can understand why I was amazed when She Who handed me her iPhone recently. On it, a video showed a boy at a piano, his hands flying left and right, up and down, as if in a frenzied tap-dance of fingers. The song he was playing, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” was as stunning as the passion and precision that produced it. (See video below.)

I’ve seen these kinds of Facebook videos before, some European Child Wonder playing with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra.

“It’s Nathanael, the Tee’s son,” she said.

“The son of Chris and Desmond, who go to our church?”

“Yep.”

“Wow.”

“And his sister plays, too.”

Beyond an occasional Neil Young jam session with my musician friend Roger Hecht, who, knowing I was a percussionist as a kid, gifted me a box drum, I don’t do music. But I’m fascinated by those who do.

So after the Tee family returned from a spring break trip to Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, I sat down Monday with the two kids and mom, Chris, who told me it all started — this is such a Eugene twist — when Chris was kayaking on the Autzen Canal.

Chris, 42, an artist, and Desmond, 43, a family practice doctor with Oregon Medical Group, know their way around a piano and guitar, but says Chris: “I’m pretty sure we’d get ‘tomatoed’ on stage.”