When I was a kid, it seems like every house I
went into had a piano in the living room.
We certainly did. Ours was an old
upright of indeterminable pedigree. At
some point in my teens or early twenties, that big upright got replaced by a
nice compact spinet that still sits in the living room of my mother’s house. I
took lessons on that old, big upright, but they never took on me. I just don’t have a feel for the workings of
musical notes.
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| I love this photo of my sister Susan playing the piano in 1960. |
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| My Aunt Judy (right) with my sister Judy (left), her namesake. Aunt Judy gave us piano lessons when we were young. |
My mother’s family is very musical. Of the eight of the siblings, almost all have
had a relationship with music in some form or other. But that music thing didn’t get handed down to me. Don’t get me wrong. I like music, but I really prefer the written
and spoken word.
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| This great old photo of my grandfather Oscar, center, and his twin brothers is one of my very favorites. A copy of it sits on our piano. |
We have a piano in our living room now. It’s a spinet that was Greg’s mother’s piano
so we are emotionally attached to it and it does make a nice focal point in the
room, but there really isn’t any reason for it to be there otherwise. It never gets touched except when I feel like
dusting it. But looking at it sometimes takes me
back to my youth and a time when it seems like everyone had a piano in their living room.
I’m not really sure what made me think of this
today. Could be that a neighbor of ours
recently posted on Facebook that they want to get rid of their piano together with the fact that I’m reading a really fantastic book right now, A Dance with Dragons by George R. R.
Martin and listening to Robert Galbraith’s (aka J.K. Rowling) The Cuckoo’s Calling and the way those
two can put words together is simply music to my ears.
