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lessons with her. I was at an awkward age, and this was certainly an awkward instrument to have to learn.
    At about the third lesson, while I was still in pain from the thought of playing anything onstage, let alone a huge log cabin on wheels, the teacher instructed me to put some “feeling” into my playing. I guess she meant some feeling other than embarrassment.
    My mother watched me practice from a chair at the side of the room. She looked on intently and then I heard her whisper loudly: “More eyes, Marie. More eyes!” She always loved the silent movies with the ingénues and their expressive eyes. I tried to tell her that . . . since the invention of sound recording . . . all that eye batting was unnecessary and way over the top.
    In this case, though, she had a point. I hadn’t looked up from the keys once because I was so worried that I might hit the wrong note. My mother wanted me to stop being concerned about individual notes and start to enjoy playing. I knew I would never live up to her expectations. I couldn’t even use the words “marimba” and “enjoy” in the same sentence.
    My mother thought I would eventually grow to love the marimba. It never happened. I dreaded every lesson, struggled through every song, and used to hope that some heavy lighting fixture would “accidentally” fall from the stage ceiling and send my marimba into oblivion.
     
     
     
    London’s O2 was only one stop on our twenty-five-date tour with the fiftieth-anniversary show. Hundreds of hours of technical planning, phone calls with venue owners, hiring of musicians and choreographers, creating light and sound designs, and scheduling with road managers had gone into the tour. Add to that list the countless hours coordinating all of us Osmonds for rehearsal time, along with the band and backup singers. It was a massive effort of love on everyone’s part.
    I knew it was time to stop thinking about my fingers on the strings of the guitar and the giant screens behind me, and change my focus to connecting with the audience. After all, they didn’t buy a ticket expecting to see Joan Jett rock the house on a Gibson double cut-away. They had come to see my brothers and me. They had come to sing along to our many hits, to have a great time, and, in a very overwhelming way that we will never forget, share the love.
    For fifty years, they have bought our records, attended our concerts, funded our star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, written to us, cheered us, and become our “family of fans.” As I looked out at their faces from the stage, many seemed to have mixed emotions about this concert. I believe they were the same emotions my brothers and I were experiencing. We had realized that this might be the very last tour in which all of us would appear together onstage. I say “might” because I almost never say “never.” I’ve learned that whenever I say “never,” something comes along to say: “Oh, yeah? Guess what!”
    Except I’m sure I can say “never” about one thing: I will never , ever again play the marimba.

The Ones Who Really Live Happily Ever After

    I had my first child twenty-six years ago. It was also the birth year of the charity I cofounded, Children’s Miracle Network, which watches more than 17 million of my other kids every year.

    A plate of tuna fish sandwiches was how it all began. A kitchen table. A yellow legal pad and pencil. Eating lunch that afternoon at my brother Alan’s home were John Schneider (yes, Dukes of Hazzard John), myself, and a small group of very talented businesspeople. I’ve read various claims that the omega oils in fish really boost brainpower. I’d have to say it was doing its job that afternoon, because at that table in the fall of 1981, the idea for Children’s Miracle Network was born.
    At the twenty-fifth-anniversary celebration in 2008, someone in the press asked me how John and I got involved in cofounding the charity. I think I answered that John is like a