My Favorite Thing

My first remembrance of our family console piano, which my mother had grown up with, was coming home to my surprise 4th birthday party and finding all my gifts displayed on the keys. A couple of years later I remember a babysitter playing it, and I thought the lovely sounds erupting from it must be the result of magic as before it only spoke cacophony. My head was quite turned. She taught me how to play, "I dropped my dolly in the dirt". We had a Christmas Carol music book, and I remember asking my mother about that time, how the black dots went with the piano keys. She showed me middle C on both, and that as the notes went up on the page, they corresponded with going up the keyboard, the black keys were the sharps and flats. I asked her if I could write in pencil on the keys and she said yes. Those pencil marks eventually wore off but I still have the ones on that Christmas Carol book where I counted the notes up from middle C. I didn't stop at 8.

After the 1976 Olympics, for Christmas I got the Sheet Music of Nadia's Theme, for Nadia Comaneci (check out her artistry on youtube, but not set to her theme!), the gymnastics gold-medalist who got unprecedented perfect 10's. The notes were very high, so there's #'s in the 20's on that sheet music. Thus began my sheet music collecting, made possible by babysitting money. Fortunately most of the families I babysat also had pianos with wonderful music books. The kids especially liked The Entertainer, not that my self-taught style was fit for adult audiences. Whenever it was convenient, I would ask to be dropped off at C&S music company to play their sheet music on their grand piano's! I could spend all day there and still leave grudgingly. I also liked listening to classical music, oldies and mellow pop music on the radio during my teen years, but the music wasn't mine until I could play it. And I had to make it mine. In high school, hymns (I somehow ended up with hymn books from various churches) and Amy Grant's Age to Age album music with Sing Your Praise to the Lord and El Shaddai were favorites.

After becoming a nurse, I moved out and was allowed to take the piano with me to my new apartment where I kept playing and practicing for the small church who had to endure my awkwardness. I was able to improve a bit there, mainly with timing as I'd never learned to keep up with a metronome. But when I had my first baby, some sort of disconnect happened and I practically quit playing. When I was first separated from my ex-husband within that year, the music bug returned, but the old piano was very out of tune so I bought, with my new nursing job, a cherry finished 84 keyed electric piano with lots of cool instruments and pressure sensitive keys. When George and I moved seven and a half years ago to this house, I sold the old heavy, unused piano and kept the newer electronic one, playing sporadically. I didn't miss the old one very much at the time because it had become so out of tune, and the new one sounded better and pretty realistic. But in the last few years I started to get more annoyed with the clicking sounds and not quite as sensitive volume. Plus the vibrations were different, and low C had begun to stick.

Just a few weeks ago, the 14 year old electronic piano died. Jared had been the main one using it of late and had almost mastered Josh Groban's February Song. George had said that last year he almost bought me a real piano for Christmas. I told him I'd rather pick it out than try to describe what I would want, so getting a new one had been in the back of my mind. Well yesterday Jared, Ben, Rachel and I went to Mr. E's (who bought C&S) Music Store and I fell in love with an old Everett studio piano that was very reasonably priced. For an old piano, the bass keys were remarkably, imo, in tune, and felt evenly used with the middle keys. It had a really nice sensitivity as I played from the store's Movie Music volume. I nearly cried to the theme, not the Rachmaninoff one, to Somewhere In Time. I tried the rich and mellow grands, and newer studios, spinets, and consoles, but they didn't feel like home. Playing the Everett brought me back to my melancholy best friend that I was closer to than any person growing up.

My relational needs have always been best met with my back to the room, people present or not, facing the wall, feeling the music. That's who I am, and is probably why I also like pounding this keyboard on my blog. Part of me has also wanted to be heard. Thanks for listening.