When I was young, my grandmother had a white lacquer upright piano. I would play this despite not having lessons. I loved that old piano. We moved away when I was seven, and I started taking lessons with my cousins. They had a spinnet, which was just fine. When we moved again, my parents found an old upright from a Shaky’s pizza with many layers of paint. My mom refinished it down to the wood, and I loved that piano, too. It had a gold harp and sounded lovely.
If you get the feeling I moved a lot, I have. I had to let go of that piano when I was sixteen and we moved again. I bought a 1915 Baldwin upright for $2.50 in college – the piano tuner said I stole it – and the adventure to move it into my second floor apartment was on. That piano is still in storage with my dad, and I’ll have to look in on it soon.
I bought a house last week. In my lifetime, this is move seventeen. I’ve been traveling a lot for my day job and juggling the everyday stuff (like moving is everyday stuff) while I’m home.
Last Wednesday I signed the papers. Movers were scheduled for Thursday. I sent a message about a piano ‘free to a good home’. In the reply I got a phone number and was told to call a woman about her piano. The movers weren’t even gone by the time I had called her, so I asked them if they wanted to move a piano. They enthusiastically agreed.
Several years ago, I received a keyboard as a gift. It did not have 88 keys. When I tried to play a whole note, the sound didn’t last as long as I needed it to. There are some things a keyboard like that is good for, but it never satisfied the longing I had for a real piano.
The keyboard did get us through the practice my son needed when he took piano lessons. My daughter played a little but was never serious about it. At the time she preferred violin.
When the boxes all arrived from the movers, I had an empty space by the stairway. I realized a real piano would fit right there. I know there are keyboards that would fill the void. Some are sophisticated enough to record music digitally with computers. But my love of “real” pianos made me want to fill that space.
After several calls to the moving company and the woman with the piano, I had a moving crew meet me to pick it up. She had owned that piano for 40 years. The harp has 1926 scrawled on it. The outside isn’t in the best condition, but it has been recently tuned and sounds lovely.
Not long after the moving crew brought the piano in, my daughter wanted to play with it. My son held the cat so the cat could play it, though I’m not sure the cat appreciated it as much as the kids did. I smile watching the kids and the cats – they remind me so much of my childhood with pianos and cats.
Be careful on Marketplace, though. I may have also purchased a backpacker guitar (which I forgot on this business trip) and a djembe drum for my son. I may have placed myself in Facebook timeout for a while. I can’t wait to get home and play on my real piano.
