He withdrew the card from the envelope and once again read the words on the front: “A Birthday Melody Just for You.”

He opened the card, still expecting that its embedded device would produce an irritating rendition of “Happy Birthday.” But for three or four seconds there was no sound at all—perhaps to allow time for reading a second message on the inside: “Peace and Joy on Your Special Day.”

And then the music began—nearly a full minute of a remarkable melodic passage from the “Spring” segment of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Considering the size of the sound device, smaller than a poker chip, the tonal quality was wonderful. But it wasn’t the quality of it that stunned Gurney—it was the vividness of the memories it brought to life.

Kyle was eleven or twelve and still coming every weekend from his mother’s house on Long Island to Dave and Madeleine’s apartment in the city. He was starting to show an interest in the kind of music that to a parental ear sounded criminal, crude, and downright stupid. So Gurney made a rule: Kyle could listen to whatever music he chose, so long as he gave equal time to a classical composer. This had the dual effect of limiting his exposure to the dreadful music his junior-high ears seemed drawn to and exposing him to masterpieces he would never otherwise have listened to.

The arrangement was not without tension and disputes. But it also produced a happy surprise. Kyle discovered that he liked one of the classical composers whose works Gurney made available. He liked Vivaldi. He especially liked The Four Seasons. And of the four, he liked “Spring” best. Listening to it became the price he willingly paid for listening to the cacophonous garbage he claimed to prefer.

And then something happened—so gradually that Gurney hardly noticed. Kyle began listening, on and off, not only to Vivaldi but also to Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Bach—not as the price he had to pay for listening to junk but because he wanted to.

Years later he mentioned casually, not to Gurney but to Madeleine, that “Spring” had opened a magic door for him and that exposing him to it was one of the best things his father had ever done for him.

Gurney remembered Madeleine passing the comment along to him. He remembered how odd it had made him feel. Glad, of course, that he’d done something that had generated such a positive reaction. But also sad that it was such a small thing—a thing that required so little of himself. He wondered if the reason for its high ranking in his son’s mind was that there were so few paternal gestures competing with it.