A Septuagenarian Singer Tells a Tale of Two Pianos
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. What the dickens was going on?
Everything can change in an instant. Acclaimed thinkers from Buddha to author Joan Didion remind us of this.
Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner, and life as you know it ends. Joan Didion
One moment, I was throwing a Halloween party; the next, the phone rang with news my father had died of a heart attack.
One moment, a doctor and nurse were urging me to push; instants later, a child who would bring out the best – and worst – of me emerged from my womb.
One moment, I opened a text...
My voice teacher, Jessica, was moving to Italy – taking nothing except her husband, sons, and a few pieces of furniture her father built. Which meant her Yamaha U3 piano, circa 1980s, was up for adoption.
How many times at lessons had I told Jessica, I want to sound like you? Would vocalizing at the U3 help me absorb Jessica’s artistry?
Woo stuff, no doubt. But trees absorb and release energy. Why couldn’t an instrument of solid spruce and maple soak up Jessica’s deeply rooted musicality over the past 40 years then transmit it, like wafts of frankincense, lavender, jasmine, and myrrh, to me?
Energy is found in living and non-living things. The chair that we are sitting in holds our energy, and the energy we can feel when we sit down can be that of the last person who was sitting in the chair before you. Sentinel and Enterprise
I Wanted That Piano.
There was just one problem. Three years earlier, I’d adopted Lady Spencer the Spinet, named for my son-in-law who so kindly found her for me on Facebook.
I left a voicemail for my daughter, excitedly offering Lady Spencer gratis. Lady S sports a few dings, dents, and scratches, but she’s in great shape for what she is. A workhorse damn near as old as I am who taught generations of piano students. Why not my 5-year-old grandson next?
My daughter texted a few hours later. “Thanks for thinking of us though.”
No one else wanted a 1960s era Wurlitzer either. I threw in the towel and contacted Habitat for Humanity. Habitat accepted and, praying for the best – say, that Lady S wouldn’t wind up in pieces as trim for a dining room – I scheduled a pickup.
Yet the guilt was killing me. I’d just about decided to cancel Habitat and move the spinet to my garage when Kim, a fellow singer, called me about an upcoming rehearsal. Idly I mentioned plans to plunk my alto part on the piano that evening when Kim confided she had done the same until she lost her piano in a fire.
My ears reverberated like an opening chord by Rachmaninoff.
Despite Kim’s shocked protestations, I refused to accept a dime. What a priceless gift Kim had bequeathed me! I could now rest easy.
Nevertheless, when Bing and Bob the piano movers showed up, an alarm bell dinged. Pianos are HEAVY, and there were only two of them.
But what did I know? Bing and Bob were young, with a weightlifter’s ripped arms. Moreover, they’d been recommended by a professional pianist and appeared to know what they were doing, wrapping Lady Spencer in heavy blankets then hoisting her without mishap out the door and down my front steps.
Phase one, check.
A little over an hour later, Bing texted me. Lady Spencer was settled in at her new home. Kim was euphoric.
Phase two – check.
Phase three hit a mild speed bump. Bing and Bob programmed the wrong city into their GPS. Still, I wasn’t unduly worried. Yes, I was paying them by the hour, but it wasn’t as if the duo had wound up in Glendale, Missouri instead of Glendale, California.
A text from Jessica two hours later, alerting me that B & B were “having trouble” navigating her outdoor steps, did launch a few butterflies. I force-fed myself a few cleansing breaths, then ran an errand around the corner to distract myself. No sooner had I returned home than Bing texted an update. They were on the road.
Phase three, check.
Nanoseconds into phase four, it was apparent Bing, Bob, and I had hit a freaking sink hole.
Wurlitzer spinets weigh roughly 300 pounds.
A Yamaha U3 weighs in at 517.
You do the math. Suffice to say the walkway the fellows had hiked down so blithely earlier had metamorphosed into Mt. Everest with dastardly plateaus.
When Bing and Bob agreed to my suggestion that I ask Gilbert, my 29-year-old trainer, to pitch in after he got off work, I knew we were in one hot mess.
The grunting and groaning and failed attempts were harrowing. I delivered a gallon of water apiece to B & B, beamed a brief prayer they wouldn’t break a bone, strain a muscle, or send the U3 flying from their sweaty palms into the street, where a semi would drop kick it three blocks south, and retreated to my patio.
There — plants eying me sadly, fountain intoning a dirge —I prayed for a trinity of miracles as defined by author/speaker Caroline Myss. I needed God to ‘bend the rules just for me.’
1. May Bing be transformed into Samson pre-haircut
2. May Bob become Goliath pre-slingshot
3. May the Yamaha lose 300 pounds
At some point, I heard footsteps indoors. It took ten cleansing breaths to brace myself and peek through the French doors. The U3 was in my living room. Black lacquer gleaming. ALL IN ONE PRISTINE PIECE.
St. Teresa of Avila swooned at the end of her ecstatic adventure. So did I. I was so done.
Phase four, check.
After a long gulp, I decided to be saintly and pay a bill whose total was irrefutably due to Bing and Bob’s manpower miscalculation. (I’d sent them photos of both pianos, plus each bloody staircase they’d encounter. A brief search on Google would have warned them Beautiful U3 was a brute.)
Shoot, I should have charged them for the service I provided, putting up with them.
And, yet, who knows? Maybe a third helper had gone AWOL, and their testosterone torpedoed their common sense.
What I did know is that I have been remiss, I have made manifold miscalculations. And, my God, have I ever been a blooming idiot or egoist. The world is so combative these days, so vengeful, resentful, condemning, critical, hateful, malevolent, sadistic. Why not add a ray of light, a dollop of kindness?
Besides, giving=receiving.
No one can doubt that you must first possess what you would give. It is the second phase on which the world and true perception differ. Having had and given, then the world asserts that you have lost what you possessed. The truth maintains that giving will increase what you possess… Protect all things you value by the act of giving them away, and you are sure that you will never lose them…Give gladly. A Course in Miracles/Workbook 187
It was easy-peasy to give to Jessica and Kim. Paying Bing and Bob’s big ugly bill and even adding a tip because, after all, they tried – not so easy. I’m a decent actress who can act like a saint. I believe in the Course utterly. Yet, to paraphrase Bob Hope, things don’t just magically happen. We have to steer ourselves there.
Stay tuned.
And please click the little heart if so inclined! Thank you!
What a wonderful recounting of what must have seemed somewhat traumatic at the time. Enjoy your new piano!
Enjoy your new wonderful friend, as it exudes all the love that it shared with Jessica for so many years.