Tag Archives: Practice

Classic Post: A Plunker’s Piano Lessons

This post first appeared on October 21, 2020.

I started piano lessons at five. Stopped at the ripe old age of nine.

Statistics indicate I’m not alone; 6,761,141,370 of the world’s 6,761,141,379 people have taken — and quit — piano lessons.

I blame my parents. Neither had musical training, yet Dad’s big hands overran the keyboard. Mom, though partially deaf, could listen to a song, then play a full-fledged accompaniment in any key.

At five, I also picked out tunes. Why bother with notes? Neither did I (shudder) count beats. Mixing music, God’s gift, with arithmetic (eww), appeared one more weird complication adults demanded.

Image by Davidatpoli from Pixabay.

Mom tried to explain. If only she could’ve taken lessons!

I’d have remained unconvinced — except for strong capitalistic instincts. Mrs. Snyder charged 50 cents a lesson, but she always refunded a nickel to me. With yellowed books and sheet music piled everywhere, her musty house smelled mysterious and musical. Thousands of former students’ photos adorned her walls, as Mrs. Snyder had been teaching 200 years.

I liked Mrs. Snyder, I liked nickels and I liked Mom’s shining eyes when I practiced.

Sadly, Mrs. Snyder passed away. My new teacher handed me practice sheets instead of nickels. I played songs like “Requiem for a Student Who Didn’t Practice.” Mrs. Mozart made me (choke!) play duets with my brother. We bowed and curtsied at stiff, scary recitals. The longsuffering teacher informed Mom we weren’t destined to play at Carnegie Hall.

She finally let us quit.

Not until college did I realize my loss. There, I met people whose fingers blurred over the keyboard. One blind friend played as if part instrument, part human. Her music rippled up and down my backbone, joy unleashed.

Why are mothers always right? Especially when they preach, “What goes around comes around.” My children blossomed with initial interest, but only one persisted into high school. As they plunked through first practices, I wondered if Mom had enjoyed mine as much as she’d claimed.

Still, my kids learned to read music, and piano background fueled interest in other song forms.

Our piano — the first purchase my husband made after medical school graduation — often sits silent now, though I try to play daily. My fingers itch to exchange my laptop’s tippity-taps for music. Soon, I’ll touch piano keys and listen to less-than-perfect love.

Even if nobody gives me a nickel.

Image by Piro from Pixabay.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: How did you feel about piano lessons?

Those Calendar Challenges

Image by Mary Pahlke from Pixabay.

Glumly, my spouse and I agree on a date-and-time powwow. We discuss emailed lists of seven grandchildren’s end-of-year activities. We summon our calendars, determined to organize our world and theirs.

Right.

How can we attend a middle school concert, high school track meet and a graduation the same day 250 miles apart?

Lots of T-ball games are on our calendar this spring.

If only science would concentrate less on the ice caps and focus on beaming us to Timmy’s T-ball game on time.

We also review dates for Hubby’s end-of-semester grading and my writing projects. Can we mow the grass monthly and plant our garden before September?

Gaaa!

Woody Allen, expanding on a Yiddish proverb, said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans.”

My parents, who were pastors, believed God’s plans rarely matched ours. Why bother with calendars? Even trips for groceries or car repair were interrupted by “divine appointments” with hurting — and annoying, I thought — people. Especially if I’d planned for us to go swimming.

My parents were more interested in God’s planner than theirs.

My dad disliked calendars not only for spiritual reasons, but because he hated whatever cramped his style. My mother, like an unpaid air traffic controller, organized five children’s piano lessons, sports practices and work schedules in her head — along with all church events.

Until I met my future husband, I considered that normal. At his house, however, an unobtrusive calendar with notations of who, what, when and where possessed a Clark Kent superpower: it ran four lives.

Yet, my naïve love and I envisioned harmonious life together. We did show up the same day for our wedding. But how have Hubby and I met additional calendar challenges?

Image by fancycrave1 from Pixabay.

First, beneath Hubby’s conventional exterior dwelt an adventurous spirit. He married me, didn’t he? Second, his career as a country doctor trashed predictability. Babies held zero respect for plans to eat and sleep. People in pain rarely followed office schedules.

Serving on a church staff and running my own launch-’em-and-land-’em household, I began to appreciate calendars. Mom memorized hers, but to be there for the people I loved, I needed a for-real calendar.

Image by Moondance from Pixabay.

Hubby and I still want to be there for family, church and community. What if our calendars — and our lives — showed nothing but white space? Blank evidence that we cared for no one, and no one cared for us?

We’d rather learn to laugh with God.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Are you a calendar fan?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: Wish I Hadn’t Quit!

O Lord, You recall how my mom begged me to practice piano, but finally gave up and allowed me to quit lessons. Thank You that my daughter didn’t cave — and, OMG, her boys make wonderful music!

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: Band Versus Choir

O Lord, Thank You for these special band members who give time and talent to help make their group one of the best. OMG, You know their grandma, who was never so dedicated, stuck with choirs — who never had to march.     

Piano Magic

My five-year-old fingers stretched across the keys of our church sanctuary’s piano.

My mom, who’d never taken lessons, played for services. The keys sang lovely songs she’d absorbed after one hearing. Soon, she played them in any key.

The piano would do musical magic for me, too.

Our family, preparing for a mission trip, lived in our church’s two back rooms. We children were forbidden to touch the church’s unlocked instruments.

Right.

My brother Ned explored the organ’s mysterious tubes and wires.

The baby grand’s rich tones drew me. Besides, fooling with the organ warranted worse punishment.

But keys rarely cooperated when I played. Sometimes, a strand of melody escaped the chaos. But the piano did not love me.

Later, I realized that before confronting us, Mom listened. Her belief in our budding talent later led to Old Camo’s appearance in our sparsely furnished living room.

I’ve never seen such a piano before or since. Gray-and-white camo vinyl covered it. Metal studs outlined its silhouette. No wonder we could afford it. Still, I fell in love.

My fumblings drove my family to the same sentiment as George Bernard Shaw, music critic as well as playwright. He said, “Nothing soothes me more after a long and maddening course of pianoforte recitals than to sit and have my teeth drilled.”

Our daughter passed the music magic on to her children.

But I recognized more and more melodies. My excitement grew … until lessons sapped the magic.

Mom encouraged practice, then bribed, then chained me to the bench, hoping I would make friends with written notes. After four years, I continued to balk. She gave up.

Still, I played for church youth meetings. My peers dove for cover, but melodies and harmonies eventually found my hands. I even played the sanctuary piano (though neither Ned nor I crawled inside the organ anymore.)

Ned, also a piano practice delinquent, nevertheless worked for a piano craftsman. After Old Camo collapsed, teenaged Ned rebuilt a baby grand for Mom.

I missed it after I married. No money for pianos. Given our fabulous $97.50-per-month studio apartment, we’d have had to sleep on the bench.

We were skinny, but not that skinny.

After graduation, a new spinet graced our living room. Despite toddler abuse, teeth-gritting kids’ practices, and my thumping, it remains a monument to the magic.

As is our daughter. Like her mother and grandmother, she often ignores little black notes and discovers her own songs.

Mom was, too. Battling dementia, she played what Dad called his “dinner music” while he cooked.

“Beautiful,” Dad told her.

Though Mom didn’t remember repeating the same song seven times, her fingers and her spirit found their way to lovely music.

The magic triumphed again.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Is piano music magic for you?