Olya, my mother-in-law, is a lycée (high school) language teacher. She has a noble hobby: poetry. Although rhyme is not her strongest skill, what comes from her pen is whispered by a loving heart and a profound mind. On her 70th birthday a few years ago, her three daughters — including my wife — hired me to extract, proofread, and edit the texts from a thick notebook, and to print a book of all her poems.

I did more than they asked: I designed the book cover and its page layout, and printed a limited number of copies. Having worked with all major printing firms in the capital during my tenure as a communication specialist at an American company, I easily bargained a low price per copy. I also wrote the afterword for it.

When the books were printed, my mother-in-law organized a big event at the community club, inviting family, friends, colleagues, and politicians to hear her read selected poems. I helped there as a photographer and videographer. She is the only person from that 5,700-strong community to have published a real book.

Now she has another idea, and I seem to be the best (and only) expert she knows in AI to help realize her new dream: putting her poems to music as songs. Here’s what happened: a niece of hers generated a song with AI using a poem my mother-in-law had published. The author was very enthusiastic about continuing, and it looks like I will be her producer.

Olya has been a grandmother for almost 30 years but is comfortable with technology, learning to use devices and apps when pressed. AI, however, is new to her. She knows how to make her face look younger in a digital photo, but music composing is not her forte. She has never used music-generating apps and is not aware of any. Yet she seems determined to put her poetry on musical rails.

“In the Mirror of Time”

My mother-in-law’s case is very different from the general pattern of how older generations look at new technology.

By contrast, my own mother, Katya, is a bit older but less curious. She uses YouTube, Facebook, Viber, and a few other apps she needs for communicating with us and her grandchildren, or for entertainment, but she is conservative about learning new things. For example, WhatsApp and Viber employ the same principles and functions, yet she won’t use Viber for fear of “deleting something.”

Katya avoids discussions about technological advances, while Olya is interested in news from this domain. When I visit them, it’s like stepping into two different worlds, although both women are teachers by profession and both live in their own countryside homes.

An artist in becoming

And so, my mother-in-law, at over 70, is about to become a recording artist. Not for fame or fortune, but because she can now see a new use for her poems — and thus better chances to share her feelings. She doesn’t fully understand how the machines compose, nor does she need to. What she understands is that a new door has opened, and she is curious enough to walk through it.

This is the difference not of age, but of attitude. Olya and my own mother, Katya, share the same decade of life, the same profession, the same rural sky above their gardens. Yet one sees technology as a wall to be carefully touched, the other as a horizon worth walking toward. Neither is wrong. Both are human.

But Olya’s quiet, stubborn curiosity and willingness to explore turn the unknown from a threat into a collaborator.

We are often told that aging means slowing down, holding on, protecting what we have. But Olya reminds me otherwise. She published her first book quite late in life. Now she may produce her first song having never used a music app. The tools change, but the engine does not: a curious heart refuses to retire. It turns technological hardship into a creative puzzle.

Age should never be a barrier to exploration. And when a grandmother falls in love with AI, she proves that the best compass through any new world is not youth, but wonder.