P is for ...

PIANO LESSONS
(and you thought i was going to say Paris)

when i was a little girl, my mother had me take piano lessons. at first i was excited.  my first teacher was this young, right out of music school, crunchy granola type who wore birkenstocks, didn't shave her legs and smelled, i would later recognize, of patchouli.  it was 1970.  i was 7.  i didn't know any better.  my excitement wained when instead of having me play contemporary tunes that i heard in movies or on television, she had me playing bela bartok. 

my next teacher was the pretty young music teacher at my brother's elementary school.  the music choices were better, but i hated practicing for 30 minutes a day, and she was so nice that she didn't seem to mind that  that musically i had no talent what so ever.  my last teacher was probably 100 years old.  she had taught at the new england conservatory and was now retired, crippled by arthritis, and needed help getting up the stairs into our living room.  when she drove up to our house in her 25 foot (it seemed) oldsmobile, you couldn't even see her head above the steering wheel.  just her little crooked hands. 

my mother finally let me quit after 7 years of torture;  torture for me, and the rest of the family that had to listen to my pounding several days a week.  she said i'd always regret quitting.  but honestly, i never have.  my old piano still sits at my parents house, unplayed.  kind of sad really.  for the piano.

a couple of years ago, my inlaws gave j and i an old piano.  no one else wanted it and we had room for it.  plus i think it's a beautiful piece of furniture. the cats like to play it.