To my daughter again
Last week I was pleasantly surprised by listening to my daughter playing the piano. This was unexpected since given our schedules I really don’t get to listen to her. I even had to tell Husband to put the TV on Mute so I could listen to the sweet sounds.
My daughter takes piano lesson since she was four or five. I acknowledge this is more about me than her. I will explain:
On one of our trips to Washington state for the apple harvest, we ended living in a cute small mobile home close to the beautiful residence of our kind and affectionate employers. They, the Sorensens, were four like us. Their youngest, Kelly, a boy of about 10, would come to us when my mom made flour tortillas and he would eat them with butter and jelly (!). Oh he devoured them! That is until it occurred to us to have him eat one with hot and spicy salsa. Kelly’s eyes overflowed with tears but he never gave up. Mrs. Sorensen asked my mother to teach her how to make those tortillas.
Her daughter, about 14 and whose name I can’t remember, studied piano. One day she taught me how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on three keys on the lustrous black grand piano they had in their living room. I was 12 and captivated by the then unknown and strange instrument and I would drum that little song, surely even in my sleep.
Once walking around downtown Wenatchee I felt myself pulled inside a music store, interested as I was in repeating on one of the pianos the little song our employers’ daughter had taught me. A very nice man, who I know suppose was the owner, came to the piano, took those three keys and using practically the entire keyboard played “Mary Had a Little Lamb” again transforming it to my captive ears into a marvelous symphonic experience.
The piano became a secret and impossible dream to me.
Almost three decades later living in San Antonio, in the laundry room of our apartment complex I saw an ad about a piano teacher Nancy. When I called her and told her of my interest but that I didn’t have a piano, she suggested we start on an electric keyboard. So I bought myself a cheap one and started my classes with Nancy who kindly would come to our apartment to teach me my class.
From Nancy I heard about a Hispanic neighbor whose name I can’t recall either. His apartment was a bazaar. His reduced space was filled with exotic and exquisite things he had for sale, among them a dark and tall upright piano that, let’s say Francisco, sold to me in installments. He sold it to me for $500 and accepted that I pay him $50 each month.
I expected him to tell me to take the piano as soon as we established the terms of our agreement. I had to wait the 10 long months.
The most symptomatically neurotic thing about me was the day MY piano was brought down from his second level apartment to ours (I don’t recall how it happened). When the piano found a wall to stand against, feeling I-don’t-know-but-feeling-it-most-deeply, I sat on the floor sheltering myself under its keyboard and I cried my little immigrant heart out, touching its wood as if it were the skin of the most desirable man on earth (let’s think Pedro Infante).
That piano is still with me. But I do not know how to play it. I took classes here in Dallas with a couple of teachers for three or four years (not much in the world of music). Reading music is extremely difficult for me. Visually, it’s very hard to give value to those dots on paper.
From one of the tuners, I know this about my piano: it’s made with Honduran mahogany, its keys are actually ebony and ivory, the strings are copper and it turned 100 years old in 1997. Its former owner was either a vegetarian or did not play it much; apparently the skin of carnivores emits some type of oils that stain the keys; this given the condition of my piano’s keys back then that were a nice pearly white. He also said that because of the extension of its strings, in order for a piano to sound like mine, we would need a grand piano (the strings are set diagonally). Another tuner valued in $2,500.
I have never considered selling it (not even during hard times). It will be for Valentina. And since she takes lessons she, more or less, has taken ownership.
Valentina takes lessons very reluctantly. And I know I shouldn’t expect her to fulfill my frustrated wishes so I can live them vicariously. But when I read that learning music helps kids to better assimilate and understand the hard sciences, I decided that she could expect me to find ways to help her understand math.
And it’s only because of this that she studies piano. It’s my motherly duty!
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