Simple Things

I remember when I played the first piano in my home. My grandmother gave us her piano when she and my grandfather divorced. I didn’t understand divorce, but I understood the sound of this magical instrument that now took up an entire end of our living room.

I remember the song I made up. Of course it turned out that the tune, “Turkish March,” was written years before by a guy called Beethoven and he wrote a lot more of it than I did, but it was what finally prompted my mother to sign me up for piano lessons.

That was the beginning of the longest and most empathetic relationship I have ever had. Not that those first lessons were wonderful. I still remember all the tears because my fingers, specifically my ring finger, did not go down the way it was supposed to. In fact I can still play that first song, “Off I Go To Music Land.” (And with both hands too!)

Typical of my life, I got things backwards. My first lessons were on a Steinway baby grand, then I had to move to an upright player piano and finally to my Wurlitzer who hates this southern humidity. But the most important thing is that I can play. Nothing soothes me more, nor fills me faster than my own fingers making that music filling the air around me. It is like a sacred bubble where life can slide from sad, or sorry, or anything else, to peaceful and content, and sometimes even ecstatic.

And it is that interaction that I love, not just good music. I know many people who are excellent musicians, much better than I am, or ever will be. I could listen to them for hours on end, but eventually I need to feel it myself, be part of it, to really reap the benefits.

A few years ago I had the chance to spend Christmas with a wonderful musician. She was really a concert level pianist and her piano was beautiful. The week I was there she played very seldom and I cherished each and every note she graced us with. Still, I dreamed of being able to sit down and play that piano myself. I ached to hear my music played by me. I wanted so badly to sit there in that sunny little room wrapped in my own private world, but I could not ask, nor could I have played with her there. I was just way too awed by her to do that.

That is both the bane and the blessing of knowing great people. They remind me how simple I really am.