Gift Of Music: About Me

When I was about 4 years old, my mother bought a piano.

She had always wanted to take piano lessons, but as a child, those lessons were cut short by a divorce in her family and lack of family resources. Despite her loss, she wanted life for her children to be different. She wanted to provide to us this gift of music. Practically speaking, she knew that her first task would be to justify this purchase to my father as he was a young military officer and she a stay-at-home mom with three small children.

Finances were definitely limited.

Well, my mother is never one to miss a trick. So, she immediately signed up her three daughters for piano lessons! The justification for the purchase was secured! I was, at the time, only 4 years old. (Did I mention we were living in Africa?) My mother found a missionary lady who would teach all three children piano lessons, but she was unsure about me because of my age, my two sisters being older than I. My mother asked her to just give me a trial lesson and to interview me. Mom felt I was "smart," "mature for my age," and would quickly catch on. When my mother went to pick me up, the teacher said without hesitation, "I'll take her!"

So, my love affair with music was born.

While my other two sisters would eventually abandon the piano for other pursuits, I was the one who absolutely loved the instrument. My mother says she never had to ask me to practice. We lived in a community without television at the time, which probably helped fuel my interest. For me, the piano was very exciting. And, I just loved the sounds it could make and the interesting melodies.

It helped give voice to my emotions that in time I would learn,

run deep.

A few years after the purchase, when we found ourselves in Africa a second time, and also leaving it a second time for the States, the piano had to be sold. It was too heavy to be shipped. I was young, maybe 7, and didn't really understand at the time what was happening. But, I felt all of my possessions were being taken away -- as well as friends, our home, the land I had grown to love, even our pets - which had to be given to friends. But, of all the things I remember, I remember most the sorrow I felt as they rolled the piano out the door. I remember going to my mother's bedroom with my piano music in my hand, holding it, sitting on her bed, and crying. She, of course, came to console me and to tell me that this would not be my last experience with a piano. We would get a replacement when we got to the States.

But, it still felt like I had lost a close friend.

I think my mother probably knew then how much music meant to me and how much it would come to mean to me. I was never really a competitive person, so I never achieved great heights with my playing. Mainly because I was just not driven to be "the best." I was, however, driven to enjoy the music and the experience. And, to share it.

So, ours - the piano and myself - was a very authentic relationship, you might say.

Later in high school, I would learn to be an accompanist and accompanied choirs, jazz band, and soloists in school and church. Not only did I enjoy it, but I was quite successful at it, and that made me feel very confident and secure in myself - not in a vain way, but a deeply satisfied way. Later, I would look back on these years as some of the happiest of my piano-playing experience. Really, of my life. During this same time, I was also hired as an accompanist for our church, where I would play the piano for services several times a week while going to college. With a constant array of music to prepare and the need to learn how to play what was not on the printed page in some cases, I remember thinking that I was finally learning how to not only play the piano, but perhaps...

...I was finally becoming a musician.

In college, I majored in music education with a double major in both applied piano & violin. (I had started to play the violin at age 9 in the public schools and stayed involved in both private lessons and orchestras.) But, I soon dropped the piano in favor of the violin because I felt the latter would be more realistic for making a living as a teacher in the public schools. That was the model I knew and understood. And, I simply could not keep up with the practice requirements for both instruments along with a full-time assortment of jobs that I had picked up in college to pay my way.

After college, I would marry and years later, I would let the piano leave my life. I still used it in my string teaching practice. But, I left my home town and my church accompanist job behind which was the main source for my piano playing at the time. I would accompany here & there, as I had a musical husband; but soon the chore of maintaining a job, being a wife, and keeping house would all occupy a bigger space in my life.

This time, I did not hold the music in my hands and weep.

It just silently slipped away.

Much later, when my daughter was born, I rediscovered the piano. The job of being a full time mother opened up a little space in my life (well, not much, but...) and I found myself drawn to the instrument again. At times when I was alone, I would sit down and play Mozart, Brahms, Bach or Chopin, holiday music, or some piece I enjoyed playing at the church. It was very soothing. I realized I needed this more than I had appreciated.

I wondered why I let it go so easily.

Soon, my daughter would grow and at around the age of two I would find nursery song books at the library and sit down at the piano and play and sing. She would hop up beside me and join in. Such sweet times. I would eventually become an accompanist at our church at the time for a children's choir. My daughter, age 4, would attend with me and learn the music and then dance around at home singing it, and banging it out on the piano. (Music would prove to be her happy place. And we enjoyed lots of "Mommy & Me" music classes together before and after this time.) Later, I would pick up the violin again and teach part-time at a school where she was enrolled and during concerts she would just beam.

"Mommy!" she would say.

It was not long before I realized she needed the music, too, and so I would sign her up for piano lessons. And then, I began to realize that perhaps that was the reason for the music - to pass it on. Yet, personally, I did not play as much. Sometimes over the holidays, I would find a reason to pull out the Christmas music favorites and play. And, I would play a few classical pieces for my daughter, while she was learning piano, and play duets with her as part of her method music and would eventually become her instructor (for better or worse!). Today, a day does not go by, unless she is not feeling well, that she does not sit at the piano and play.

And, the joy and satisfaction I know so well comes shining through.

But, even with all of that, I forgot once again, that I needed this just for me. I let someone else play while my fingers remained mostly silent. Until one day recently when we bought an electronic keyboard. It was a fun novelty from our acoustic instrument that I'd grown up playing and loved so much. With the new instrument, I could sit down and play it, put on the headphones, and play in peace, just for me. Maybe that's why I had stopped playing. I felt there was no space for my songs to fill. Shortly after the new purchase, my husband and I found ourselves enlisted to play for a wedding and they wanted something with strings, so the electronic keyboard became an orchestra as I orchestrated various pieces to fit the mood.

What great fun... I had forgotten....

Then, I remembered my love for Christian classics and began to play some of those in addition to the classical and wedding music.... And, I realized during all of this,

I had come home again.

Through the miracle of computers, it is my hope that I can give back to my parents, who so faithfully took me to lessons and competitions growing up and were there in the audience for me. It is my hope that I can give something to my mother especially, to assure her that yes,

that piano purchase over 40 years ago...

was indeed,

justified.