The Piano

I remember when the piano came to live in our house. It was an old, dark brown upright. It had history, and it had character. From the moment that it was given a place of its own in our living room, I was drawn to it and to that place in our house. To some a piano is just a piece of furniture. To others a piano is merely a musical instrument—something connected to a hobby. Others have pianos because of the memories that represent—people or times that are in the past. To me, even though I was only 9, I knew the piano was going to be so much more to me. I was right. That piano, and one other since, became my lifeline- at different times, my therapist, my sibling, and my medium of prayer.
Of course, the piano didn’t come into my life through my efforts, nor was it brought into our house for me. My mother needed the piano. She bought it for herself, for a particular purpose.

My mother could not play the piano, but she needed to learn how. She was an amazing singer. When she was a little girl she won prizes in the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. She was proclaimed a “little Kate Smith”—a title she hated, but one that was meant as praise. She was a member of the New York all-city high school choir under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. And during WWII she was a Navy WAVE, the girl singer in uniform performing with combos of sailor musicians at Bond shows. After our difficult move from New York to California—a move created by my father’s medical discharge from the Navy with instructions to live in a warm climate—my mother found herself in a strange place, away from roots, from family and friends, with an alcoholic husband who she didn’t really know, and a young daughter she was ill equipped to raise.

Her solution to her unhappiness and her financial insecurity was to go to college. California in the late ‘50’s was experiencing an extraordinary population boom, which created a teacher shortage. The state offered to subsidize the college education of anyone willing to become a teacher. My mother did not want to become a teacher—she often said she didn’t like children. But she wanted that college degree, she wanted that experience, and this was a way to make it happen. She enrolled in the local community college, and in light of her vocal abilities, she became a music major. One of the classes she was required to take was piano. She bought the used upright piano so that she could practice—and it came to live in our house.

I was fascinated by this piano. In the many hours that I was alone in the house, I would sit on the squeaky bench, reaching my feet down to try to reach the two pedals that worked, and the one that didn’t. I would place my fingers on the yellowed ivory keys—keys that were cracked and chipped. I would pretend to play songs. If my mother was home, I did this silently, because the piano was off-limits for me. I was not allowed to play it. But when I was alone in the house, which was frequently, I pushed the keys, high and low, loudly and softly. I explored the range of sounds it could make, and like Snoopy pretending to be “the Ace pilot” I pretended, too. Here’s the famous concert pianist performing before thousands of adoring fans.

After a couple of weeks, I began to ask my mother for lessons. I wanted to be able to play; the pretending was not enough. She turned me down definitively.

“Why can’t I have lessons,” I would ask.

“Because I don’t have the money to pay someone to teach you,” she would tell me.

“Then could you teach me? You are learning how at college. Teach me what you know, please!”

“Absolutely not,” she would say, “Why? Because you won’t practice, and then we would fight. It would be a waste of my time, and make a bigger problem for me. Besides, I really don’t want to hear the noise of you practicing. I have too much going on.”

It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear, but it was a clear answer. My mother was not the kind of parent to say one thing and mean another, so I now had to decide what to do.
The next time I was alone, I not only played the keys, but I opened my mother’s piano book. It was the John Thompson Adult Method—Book I. I started on the first lesson, and to my surprise, it made sense to me. If I read everything carefully I found I was able to learn the lessons. First one, then the next. As the lessons got more complicated, I paid more attention to my mother as she was practicing. If I heard her play one of the little pieces, I could work on it when she wasn’t home.
She had no idea what I was doing—but I was doing so well. There came a time—months later, when I was more than halfway through the book, and I wanted her to hear what I had accomplished. I was also feeling increasingly guilty that I was being disobedient about playing the piano. Since I had stopped asking for lessons, and since she never saw me even sitting at the piano, she had no indication that I was learning to play. Once she even said to me, “I notice that you aren’t interested in the piano anymore. I’m so glad we didn’t start lessons, aren’t you?” It hurt me to be deceptive, but I wasn’t sure what she would think if she knew I had been playing the piano behind her back.

I decided that I would play for her. I had been working very hard on “Spinning Song.” It was difficult for me. I had now gone ahead of her in the book, so I had to learn this piece entirely from the written music and instructions. But I finally could do it.
I waited until she announced that she was going to take a bubble bath. I listened for the tub to fill, for her to turn off the water, and I listened for the sound of her stepping into the tub and lowering herself down into the suds. I had used this strategy before. If I had something risky to communicate to my mother, I had learned that waiting to tell her until she was in the tub increased the odds of a good outcome for me. After all, if she was in the tub, she was naked, soapy and wet, and it would take her a few beats to get up, get out, get a towel, and get to me. It hadn’t prevented consequences, but it had minimized them. At least that was my belief.

So I waited for the moment, and finally it came. Giving her a few minutes to settle into the warm water, I said from outside the door. “Mommy, listen to this.” I went quickly to the piano and began playing. I played the whole piece, expecting at any moment she might appear, furious and slam the cover down. But she didn’t. I came to the end of the piece—a long broken chord played by the left hand. And then silence. I sat there on the bench waiting for a response. Silence. No praise, but no anger. No delight, but no fury. No news can be adequate news.

I took it as tacit approval. I continued to play when I was alone, and being a foolhardy (or maybe courageous) child, I tentatively began to play when she was home, but not in the bathtub. I didn’t push my luck by asking questions or practicing pieces that were still in process. But I would play things that I could play—right out in the open.
I went on to become a church musician. My first job at Grace Lutheran was when I was only 13 years old. In college, I chose music for my major. I have degrees and credentials in music and music education.

But my mother and I didn’t talk about that day until I was 35. It took 25 years for us to have the conversation. I asked her one day, “Do you remember that day when I played ‘Spinning Song’ for you while you were in the bathtub?”
“Oh yes,” she said, “It was a day that changed everything. What you didn’t know was that I had been struggling with my music classes. I was doing fine with everything else, but I was getting D’s in harmony and music theory, and I was failing piano. I had been trying to figure out what to do, when all of a sudden you—you #$% kid, played the song that I hadn’t been able to play. You had done it all by yourself, and I hadn’t been able to do it at all. I sat in the water and cried. The next day, I went to the registrar, dropped all my music classes and changed my major to English.”

That was all she said about it, and I let the subject go for another time. That time never came. If it were possible, I would ask her more about that day. There was more I would like to have heard, but at least I had the end of the story. My mother became a wonderful high school English teacher.

And I made my living in music. I still do. Piano has been the constant for me. Although I am not a concert pianist, playing the piano has been an anchor in my life. It has been there when people have not, and when life took terrible turns. It has been and still is for me, company, celebration, grief management, and prayer. In an odd way, it reminds me of my mother.

I will always be grateful for the day that the piano came to live in our house.