by Jenny Morelli
“So, when are you picking up the piano?”
My father and I were sitting together in the front row staring at Mom’s flower-ensconced urn, when he asked me this question with a bloodshot, sad-eyed smirk, and that’s when it all came flooding back to me like a movie on fast-forward, starting with that first piano lesson.
I’d sat on the bench and stared at the black and white keys beneath my fingers, and at rows and rows of dots and lines I was meant to follow, a well-worn yellowed sheet of music the piano teacher had assigned; a scroll of basic notes, sans heart or soul, and that’s when I made the decision not to return.
My brother, John, had gifted me his remaining lessons because he had lost interest after my sister gifted them to him after she had lost interest. After one, I quit, not because I couldn’t do it, but because I wanted to play the way my Uncle Charlie played, with all the bells and whistles, and not the way Mom played, note by note, turning page after page from beginning to end while belting out the words if there were any.
I still reflexively roll my eyes whenever I hear Ode to Joy and Heart and Soul.
That day, as I stared at the stupid ‘homework assignment,’ I’d clucked and shook my head, then closed my eyes and clicked play on my cassette player, fingers poised to listen, to feel, to play what I heard, every complicated note from all my favorite songs.
From that day on, I’d spend hours listening, rewinding, reviewing and duplicating every note, every beat, every bar and chord, every melody and harmony in all its many nuances while Mom puttered about, taking care of her babysitting kids, humming along as she worked.
I played by ear until I knew by heart all my favorite songs, Pachelbel’s Canon and St. Elmo’s Fire and Sometimes When We Touch, and so many more because that is what I really wanted, no matter what Mom or John or some stupid piano teacher taught me.
And something would happen when I played, some magical shift in my brooding teenage universe. Everything I hated would fall away: Dad’s slamming doors, Mom’s cries of frustration, the daycare kids’ snores from their naps beneath my feet, leaving only me and Spanky, who’d sprawl on top of the piano, purring euphorically as I plunked and plinked the many keys until music emerged, all on my own.
Together, we’d slide into another world as if falling down a rabbit’s hole where everything was different and happy, colorful and uncomplicated. We’d spend hours there in our own little world, Spanky and me, Dan Hill, David Foster and Pachelbel, sitting on a blanket in the sun-gleaming grass with tea and crumpets and floating keys, butterflies and hummingbirds fluttering and flitting to and fro.
Everything was just plain good when I played from my heart and soul as I’d created my own ode to joy; everything so opposite from an above-world of chaos and tension and anger-soaked reality.
In the many years that followed, Mom would joke that I’d get the piano since my sister and brother had both agreed they had no interest in the passion she’d tried to pass down to them.
Then, in the ten years that followed her gut-punch diagnosis of dementia, the piano had become the only thing that still brought light to her eyes when she fumbled with the keys nonsensically or let me play a song or two for her, and then my siblings and I bickered over who deserved it when she passed, the legacy that it had become.
And through the numbness of the days between her passing and her final memorial, nothing could pull me from my stupor, especially not my ever-stoic father, not until we were sitting together in the front-row seats closest to her flower-ensconced urn, when he turned to me and asked, ‘So when are you picking up the piano?’ with a bloodshot, sad-eyed smirk.
Then, and only then, did the dam of devastation break inside me before my whole family, a heart-breaking, soul-crushing sob.
And now, here I sit once more, staring at the black and white keys beneath my fingers, feeling her heart and soul flow into mine as I play for her like I used to.
***
Jenny Morelli is a high school English teacher who lives in New Jersey with her husband and cat. She is often either inspired by her students or else they're triggering memories in her of when she was young and struggling with her self-confidence. She has been published in a number of literary magazines, including Spare Parts for a novel excerpt, Spillwords for several themed poems, and Bottlecap Press for her own chapbook This is Not a Drill.
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