Me, my mother, and the piano

Watch your ears I said as I slammed the piano lid one last time! Bam!! God, that felt good!

My dear neighbors Jenny and Hannes will unfortunately be moving, and it turned out they couldn’t bring Jenny’s piano to the smaller condo. Can I have it, I asked, and I could!

Me and the piano as an instrument have a very difficult relationship. It started out in my early years. Yet, I think a house needs a piano. As a house needs a cat.

When I was 5 my mother took me for my first piano lesson. There were hundreds of them to come until the day when I started high school, moved away from home and was liberated from that ball and chain.

My mother’s ambition for me at that time was two hours practice a day. I don’t know if she come to realize how unrealistic that was, but for all my childhood one hour a day was the standard. I hated every minute of it, and as I grew older I started to lie, telling her that I had done my practice while she was away. Or ran to the piano throwing myself at the stool as I heard her on the steps to the hose. And as an obstinate teenager I was down to half an hour.

A lot of my time at the piano I spent trying to reed the music through my tears. I can at any time recall the effort to blink the tears away, as my hands were occupied on the keys not to interrupt the music she expected from me. And I can feel the salty liquid running down my face, mixed with snot as it reached my mouth. Swallowing swallowing. Playing playing. While the tears found their way down my neck and in-under the collar.

I wish I could tie you to the piano stool, my mother used to say. Well she did mentally. I even have a picture in my head the stool covered with twine. That did not happen, but the picture is the possibility it might. You will thank me one day, she said. I wish she had been right. One might think all those hours would have made me somewhat of a piano player. But it didn’t. Not a bit.

I have hardly touched the piano since I had the choice not to. Correction, I have hardly played anything from out of a music sheet. However, I have written songs and coming up with the harmonies for them at the piano. I wish my mother had seen how her daughter was an intuitive child and that’s the way she could have been a musician, as my mother’s ambition was. Although I wasn’t aware of the density of her desire until a couple of years before she died.

When my parents passed away and we cleaned out our childhood home I, against all odds, took care of the piano. The one I had was really bad, and a house needs a piano. Besides, my two sons liked hanging out with the instrument. I planned on burning the detestable stool though, I mean actually burning it, up in flames. But it turned out piano stools are really expensive so I ended up only putting new fabric on.

Since then, parts of Trouble&Trouble’s music has been created on their grandparents piano. And some of mine too. But it’s time has been up for a good while. Keys are falling off. It’s impossible to tune. So I’ve desired a new one for many years. A house needs a piano. And then it turns out Jenny wants a new home for hers! 

To Jenny and her mother the piano is relaxing. Meditative. A sonorous tranquilizer.  So last week I slammed my childhood piano lid one last time! Bam!! God, that felt good! And Trouble&Trouble and Hannes moved it out to the barn - in wait for final termination. In my music room now, Jenny’s piano, which also is a really beautiful piece of furniture. I think it comes with a good vibe and mojo. Adding the right energy for my home. She kept the stool though. As hers to her, is a comfort.

How different things are, according to our experiences. I will not pull out a piece of sheet music to play on Jenny’s piano. I know my eyes will tear up just watching it at the stand. I once asked my friend Mats what he thought my natural instrument would have been. The piano, he said. You have the sensibility. Too bad mom. The day never came when I come to thank you for my childhood piano upbringing. And too bad for me. I am thanking you for the music in my life. But not for the piano.