The Piano
What Anchors You To Home and Why That Matters
It was the first thing she bought with her own money. At least, that’s how I remembered the story. My parents had bought a tiny, two-bedroom cape in the small town my Dad grew up in that hardly had room for the brown plaid couch and coffee table wedged between corners, but my Mother insisted it wasn’t a home without a piano.
Mom plays music with her entire body. Her arms dangling over the keys like Liberace. Her eyes closed, swaying to the alto-tone of the clarinet. Her hips shaking, plucking the red, electric bass we gave her for Christmas one year. “If I Had a Hammer” still lingers rent-free in my mind at bedtime- her bright strum on the ukulele the soundtrack of my childhood. I do not know a single instrument my Mom couldn’t simply pick up and play- to this day. It’s almost maddening. Only because I am jealous.
But there was something about the piano. THIS piano. It smelled like coffee and Murphy’s oil. Of women’s wanting and of needs and how so often, for us, they are the same. My Mother couldn’t breathe without a piano. I would later learn I couldn’t live without this particular one.
My Nana taught me my scales on this piano. Calling out from the kitchen from over steaming pots, “WRONG! Start again!” which meant, back to middle C, no matter which scale I was on. When I stumbling too often for too long, her fingers with the cuticles bitten right down to raw flesh, covered my half-moon child nail-beds with a forceful push. “Count it out loud!” she’d yell. Rhythm was never my strongest suit.
Every Christmas, we would dig out the Reader’s Digest Christmas Music Book and take turns through the favorites. My Mother plays like my Nana- full-hearted, full-bodied, every cell vibrating. Her dulcet alto flew right above Nana’s whiskey tenor, her chords scratchy from years of 2 packs a day and a thyroid surgery gone wrong. Nana’s favorite was A Christmas Song. Mom always played Silent Night. I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day was forever my request, and everyone hated it. It’s still my favorite.
When I decided in high school that music might be something I want to pursue, I spent hours sitting on the bench plucking out 16 bars of audition songs. Begging the matriarchs of the family to play “accompanist” while I butchered measure after measure; too ambitious, too afraid. The keys held every heartache of those teenage and college years- some self-inflicted. Some grief too deep to name. The bench held my body when I lost my voice and couldn’t use the piano as a crutch but as the instrument it was intended to be. I was never a pianist. I’m still not. But I was so grateful to have a place to put my hands.
When I got married, my Mom told me she wanted me to take the piano. I moved it with me to our craftsman home- four large friends bribed with beer and pizza guiding it precariously onto a rental van. I measured the inside wall, and decorated around it for every single season. It played “Happy Birthday” for my firstborn child, was host to too many jam sessions in our living room to count; its keys sticky with sweat and a mediocre IPA someone brought to share. It was the center of everything we did. It’s bench wide enough to hold my daughter as we played.
When my marriage fell apart and I was 7 months pregnant with my second, I had to sell the home I thought I would leave to my children. I knew the piano wouldn’t fit up the stairs to the second-floor apartment that would house us for the foreseeable future. When the reality hit that I would be leaving it behind, I wailed like I had lost a child. I still count it one of the greatest losses of my life. My mom offered to house it, until I could “get back on my feet”. A feat seemingly impossible without my friend, the piano.
The piano now sits in the living room of my 200-year-old home. Its lid is never closed, and there is a bit of purple paint on middle C so my oldest can find it when she’s practicing for her auditions. I don’t get to sit at it as often as I would like. We all work from home now, making a mid-day interlude rude when there are Zoom meetings and concentrating necessary.
I’m still not a pianist.
But I sat at it this weekend when everyone was out and about and let myself remember. All the pieces of who I was and who I am now are held in these keys. Every single moment I have lived, breathed into the wood. Every tearful prayer sung. Every D in a belt finally reached. Every longing, every tether to the world- everything that has ever made sense has only ever been here, at this bench. From when I was one year old, to forty-two.
It is my anchor to myself. My tether to home.
When I am upended by life, lost in direction, unsure of the future-
I find peace for the moment, here. And it is always enough.
I’m not sure what that means; but as I enter the second Act of my life, I know it is something to lean into.
What brings you home to yourself?