When I was a very small girl, my parents acquired an old upright piano. It sat in the living room, in the corner of the room with the most windows. Shafts of sunlight, dancing with dust motes, shone upon it. I got to know the ivory and black keys—admired their beauty, and listened to the differences in sound that each key created. I played with the pedals. It was wonderful fun to sit on the edge of the bench, stretch down with my toes to the pedals, and to make sonorous noises with the lower octaves.
My job was to keep the piano clean. Never since then have I had a cleaning job I loved.
Mom asked me if I would like to take piano lessons, and, happily, I said “Yes!” I must have been five at the time.
She arranged for a piano teacher for me and my brother, who was two years older.
Mrs. Spangler was ancient, tiny and bent, with veins like blue snakes on the backs of her hands, and a million wrinkles. But it didn’t take me long to figure out that she loved two things: children, and teaching them to play the piano.
She gave me pretty songs to learn. My favorite was “Estrellita” by M. Ponce. How excited I was to see that those funny- looking markings meant something, and that they were written by a person whose name was right at the top, under the song’s name.
I learned to read music pretty easily, just as easily as I was learning to read language. Coordinating my right and left hands took a bit of trial and error, but soon I could do it without much effort.
What I didn’t do terribly well was counting—once I learned how a song was supposed to sound, I could mimic the style and sound of it. And didn’t bother counting. I probably had what amounted to a bit of showmanship. I loved the sound of the piano, and was oblivious to the need for the technical stuff. And I don’t think Mrs. Spangler cared, or at least she felt it was more important to be in love with music first, and then work on the less thrilling parts.
We worked well together for at least a couple of years. Song after pretty song. My little stack of music books and sheet music was growing thicker. Practicing was something I loved, because it let me do beautiful things. I even made up some of my own tunes and tried to figure out notes to play with my left hand. And I could almost always avoid chores, because Mom could see that I was doing something constructive.
Then, one day Mother told me that Mrs. Spangler wouldn’t be teaching me any more. She lived with her sister, and the city of Akron had bought their house to make room for the new expressway (I had no idea what that meant, only that I was losing her). Mrs. Spangler had to move to western Ohio to live with another sister. But—Mom assured me—she would find me another piano teacher right away.
And she did. Mom told me her name was Mrs. Paul, and she would be coming on the bus. I was out on the front porch long before her bus was due. It was during the leafiest part of summer, and our neighborhood was lush with shade, dappled with sunlight peeking through the leaves and the spaces between the trees. We were right between bus stops, so I could watch in both directions. The old trolley lines were recently out of use, but the bus lines kept the same routes. The overhead lines still vibrated when the heavy bus came near.
I stooped down to see the bus approaching; I saw it slow to a stop; I saw the door open; and I saw a person step down onto the concrete at the corner. Unobserved, I could watch her make her way toward the house.
Several things struck me at once: she was out of breath, she had a frizzy cloud of brilliant red hair, she was tottering along on high heels, she carried a big leather satchel, and her fleshy body seemed to be trying to escape her sleeveless black dress. Once she got closer, I could see the runs in her stockings, the sweat glistening on her forehead and upper lip. She was wearing very colorful makeup. A lot of it. Even though I loved makeup (what little girl doesn't?), and used my mom's lavishly until she made me take it off, I knew from half a block away that Mrs. Paul was wearing too much.. And I could smell her perfume, which was so strong it wasn’t pretty. Maybe it was never pretty.
I suppose she introduced herself, but I don’t remember that. I’m sure she said hello to my mother, but I don’t remember that either.
What I remember is that she wriggled her bottom into place next to me on the piano bench, asked me to show her my music. With love and pride, I showed her my stack of pretty songs. She said, “That will never do!” And with one gesture she scooped up all of my music, dropped it into her satchel, and brought out a sickly yellow book. It was all scales and exercises. No songs at all. My heart was a leaden weight that dropped to the bottom of my belly, and left an aching hole where it used to be.
Mrs. Paul counted. “A-one and two and…” Her voice had a broad and harsh quality: Donald Duck, in a too- tight dress and garish makeup. I came to dread that sound.
I was distracted for a moment when she reached to turn the pages of the music book: she revealed an enormous tuft of bright red hair under her arms. I was fascinated. I had never seen underarm hair like that before, so she seemed even more like some bizarre creature who came to my house to take my beautiful music away.
She gave me only scales and exercises: no songs. Lessons were unhappy hours. Practice was drudgery. My mother made it clear that she was giving me piano lessons because I had asked for them, so I couldn’t cry. Instead, I discovered the delaying power of hiccups. I had them often.
Eventually my mother said, “Since you’re not willing to practice like you should, I’m going to stop paying for your lessons.” She was exasperated, and meant to punish me. How could I tell her how relieved I was?
Even without lessons, I still played. When I reached adolescence, I bought sheet music of pop songs. I mastered some rather complicated ones. I had musical friends, and borrowed their music books. I learned some Haydn, some Bach, some Handel. As always, once I heard them played correctly and puzzled through the notes, I could play these pieces with flair if not metric accuracy. I took voice lessons in high school and used the piano to accompany myself—usually one-handed, but sometimes more than that.
When I went off to college, Mother gave my piano away. “To the church,” she announced. “You’re not using it, and I thought they needed it more than you did.”
Of course, it wasn’t that I wasn’t going to use it. I just couldn’t play it while I was away at school. (I did play the piano in my dormitory’s lounge, and sometimes drew a small crowd of observers).
Once I became a mom, I invited a piano into my home. My toddlers banged around on it, and both discovered that they could pick out tunes.
They did not take piano lessons. Our son wanted to learn drums, so he took lessons for awhile. Then guitar lessons for awhile. Our daughter taught herself some piano, and was technically far better than I ever was. Her loves were violin, which she played brilliantly, and then singing, with a voice both crystalline and rich. She took violin lessons from the fourth grade on. She took voice lessons from the time she was fourteen. And I heard her learning and rehearsing the gorgeous songs she chose for performances. Many times I stopped what I was doing and listened—sometimes I cried, because her violin pieces were breathtaking, her songs were beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking. I learned that I must not walk into the room, because she would stop immediately.
When she began college, she majored in music. She discovered musical theater and was in local productions and in the national tour of a major musical. I’ve had the enormous joy of seeing her and hearing her onstage and on recordings and on video.
We’re on our third piano, and when she has her own home, this piano—which really was given to her—will move out with her.
What will I do then? Although I stopped playing years ago, I can’t imagine life without a piano. But I can imagine a living room that doesn’t have to be arranged to accommodate this huge piece of furniture. There are no good substitutes for a real piano. Yes, I’ve had keyboards, and they are fine… but there are no pedals to strain for, there isn’t the bench filled with sheet music, there isn’t the friendly solidity of even the humblest of pianos.
I may do without for awhile… but I will always have a hunger: for the silky touch of the keys, the memories of pretty sounds and happy times. These are always nestled into the wood and felt and metal of an actual, real live piano.
©2010 J M-K
