Photoessay #1146 - Piano

My guided autobiography group still meets every two weeks. We write short pieces on a theme and read them to each other. Fun! If you go to Third Place Books, and see 5 women of a certain age gathered around a table, intently listening to each other and laughing, that's us. A group of women, thought there are a few prior connections, would probably never have such kinship with each other.

So this week, our theme is Music. I wrote this piece about my father and the baby grand piano.

Whoo, it's way different than the Memoir class, we cover so many techniques and issues. Last night was the last class for fall quarter. Theo (the teaher) said that she taught the class on a graduate school level. The same level of difficulty as a Master of Fine Arts program. We like that but it IS hard. You don't get to just muse around like I do in this piece. And how we did in the autobiography class.

Back to the Piano Piece

My father played the piano every night. He had his standard list of 1940's boogie woogie numbers. Very familiar and comforting to me as a child going to sleep listening to him play. My parents always had a piano from the earliest days of their marriage.

We had an older upright piano when I was small. I don't know where they got it. I also can't quite remember where it was located in the houses we lived in. Must have been in the living room in the Arden Park home and that fifth extra bedroom in the Wilhaggin house though I don't remember him playing it there My grandparents moved out of their larger house in Belmont and they shipped their baby grand piano to us. When we moved into the Wilhaggin house, my mom had an interior decorator 'do' her living room and dining room. Kind of avocado green/turquoise French Provincial, looking it up, make that "California French Provincial". Complete with a wall paper mural of a fountain in the same tones. Sounds dreadful, really it wasn't, I always liked it. My mother had stipulated that the living room should look complete but that there be a plan to rearrange the furniture to fit in a baby grand piano when it arrived.

The piano, a Mason Hamlin had been bought by my grandmother on payments in the depth of the depression. My grandfather, the Harvard graduate, actuary, and insurance executive, likely provided enough income that my father's family didn't feel the depression (unlike my mother's family who went from wealthy to impoverished). Deep brown, highly polished, it became the centerpiece. My father learned to play on that piano. He could play by ear, a talent that I didn't inherit. He would play popular songs but my mother said that he always changed the tune in some way such that you couldn't sing along.

After that point, when my parents moved (and they moved more than I have), a place to put the piano was high on her list in evaluating a house. In their last place, a bay window provided a space in the front of their largish living room.

My father thought that children should have piano lessons so I, as the oldest, started at around 7 years old. I kept at it through junior high. I never was much good, kind of a ton of bricks style. My brother was also signed up but they gave up after maybe a year. My younger sister got a general introduction, maybe a few months. Parental fatigue, I get it.

My father was ill for nine years. With so many health crises and treatments, often we couldn't really know where he was with his health. One day, my mother asked, how do we know he's better? We decided that he could be considered in good health if he could:
a. use his computer
b. drive the car
c. play the piano

During these ill years, he would play the piano rarely. We all felt happy when he did play. But, he felt that he couldn't play well, that his fingers wouldn't work right and he would become discouraged. During these years, he withdrew and nobody really could have much of a conversation with him. He would not respond to our encouragement that he play. That we would enjoy it. No, no, if he couldn't do it right, he wouldn't do it at all.

Towards the end of her life, my mom started telling some stories. Before she married in 1950, she worked as a professional with the girl scouts, directed camps, etc. After she married, she stopped that kind of work. The local council called her, they had an emergency, they needed a camp director RIGHT NOW. My mom explained that she was married "Who cares," they said "bring him along". So they moved in and, for some months, my father commuted from the camp. My mother insisted that he have a piano to play. The camp people assured her that he could play the piano in their main hall. They promised to feed him heartily. So they struck the deal My father, of course, wouldn't talk about it.

My sister thought somehow that this piano was something special. However professionals gently told her that it was not concert hall quality. Like many things, it was left to my brother. He gave it to his close friends, Neil and Barb. So it moved from Rockford.

All things pass.