Goodbye, Piano

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Yesterday the movers hauled off the lovely piano that has graced our homes for 16 years. This small upright, with fewer than 88 keys and a bird-cage mechanism, was bought by my maternal grandfather back in the 1970s, from a warehouse full of these pianos that had been mouldering since WWII or WWI. When he brought it home, my grandmother had a fit and threatened divorce if it ended up in her kitchen. It did end up in her kitchen, and soon my grandfather had her taking piano lessons (she was probably in her 70s then).

The piano was beautiful, with inlaid wood and candelabra, though it could never hold a tuning for very long. Still, I would sit on the piano stool at my grandparents' house in rural southern Maryland, looking out the window at the Potomac River, and learn my grandmother's favorite songs: Somewhere My Love, and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. When the tuning got too bad, I stopped playing, even though my grandfather would ask me over and over. I'd tell him, "It's terribly out of tune" and he'd say, "It doesn't matter!" Now I wish I had played for him all he wanted.






















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