This Year's Love

 Listening to "This Year's Love" by David Gray on repeat.  Today, or specifically tonight, brings 19 years since my Dad passed away in a tired, gray nursing home just off Franklin Road in Roanoke.  He politely waited for me to leave the room after my being there all day and into the late evening.  He passed while I was driving home, listening to this song on repeat in my car.  It was 2001 and Gray's "White Ladder" album was popular - great driving music for my trips up and down I-81 for visits before things got more serious and I parked it at Mom's for that final month.  I don't actually know with certainty that he passed while I was driving home.  Phyllis from the nurses' station called around 10:15, as I was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, having eaten no real dinner yet, and asked to speak to my mom.  My mom, technically the point of contact even though they were divorced, was showering.  Phyllis tried to put off the inevitable by saying she'd call back, but I asked her to just tell me so she reluctantly did.  I decided that he had probably passed while I was driving home and that Phyllis had only just made her rounds and discovered him there by the time I was spreading peanut butter.  I decided that the lumpy throat feeling while listening to the song in the car was probably some symbolic connection to his passing.  

I made handmade framed photo-lyrics for our wedding favors.  96 different song lyric snippets superimposed onto travel photos from our trips, placed in frames that I then painted in our "wedding colors" which I pretended to know all about when anyone asked. Uh, navy blue and sage green?  Spring colors?  I adored making them and was delighted to let each of our beloved 74 guests choose one from the tables to take home.  The picture of the US Capitol taken during a city-day adventure with Matt early in our dating years, with a bit from "This Year's Love" was one of the 22 left.  I decided to declare it serendipitous.  

The lyrics aren't even great.  They're not about the same kind of love just because I wanted them to be.  Gray's voice is fine.  The melody is nice.  It's the piano that reels me in. 

I started playing piano when I was four - the age that Arthur is now.  I say piano, but technically I started playing a pea-green electric keyboard that my grandmother picked up from the flea market when I was four.  It made a loud, constant wind sound if it was on - louder even than the sound that the keys made.  But I loved it.  I can remember sitting cross-legged on the floor with it placed in front of me, hunched over it for hours.  I found it very entertaining to pick out melodies - even more so when I found it to be pretty easy.  I started lessons with Anne Stewart by the time I turned five, once my grandmother realized that I was already playing by ear.  For several years I got new Casio keyboards for birthdays and Christmases - the kinds that were only two octaves and would fit in a backpack if you let the top stick out a little.  I loved the silly drum machine sound buttons that would play different styles like the bossa nova or the watusi.  I was today years old when I learned what the watusi actually is, but I vividly remember liking that particular button.  

Then, the organ showed up. A small Kimball organ from the flea market.  My grandfather was "the" locksmith in town and made and sold keys out of his van every weekend in his rented spot at Happy's flea market on Williamson Road.   He was quite popular and in high demand, with steady lines of customers for hours and hours.  My grandmother sold clothes and housewares from a little fold-out table next to his van and everyone knew her, too.  Everyone also consequently knew that she had a granddaughter who played music because she undoubtedly repeated that fact to all. Hence, an organ showed up.  So my lessons with Anne Stewart were organ lessons because you can't own an organ but instead take piano lessons, I or my mom or my grandmother and probably Anne Stewart supposed.  

I appreciated the challenge of the organ, but I really wanted to play the piano.  Organ is a serious hot mess of difficult.  Your feet even have to hit the right notes and on skinny little pedals.  It is quite possible and often encouraged that your hands cross each other on opposing keyboards, yet the music won't necessarily warn you of that.  I still don't really grasp the concept of the stops and all the other buttons and settings.  Though, my modest little Kimball did have a watusi button!  Gargantuan props to organists.  I stuck it out with the organ for many years before relentlessly begging to switch to piano.  Let's say that was high school, but I really don't remember.  

I never owned a piano, mainly because pianos don't typically show up at flea markets or go on lay-away sales - the two ways I acquired most things as a kid.  So now I was a piano student instead of an organ student, but practicing piano pieces on an organ.  This frustrated both Anne Stewart and me, but there really wasn't much she or I could do about it so we marched on.  Speaking of marching, I also dove full speed ahead into marching band around this time, playing drums.  It turns out if you can already successfully play the piano on a pretend-piano Kimball organ, you can very easily sight-read rhythms and tap your foot to the beat simultaneously - the only requirement for entry into a middle school percussion class.  In 1989, another requirement was being not a girl, but I forgot to let that bother me somehow.  

Drums eventually won, literally beating out (sorry) piano, ballet, tap, figure skating, taking advanced classes if it meant more than an hour's homework because...duh...rehearsals, and the volleyball and track teams that I made but didn't participate in because...duh...rehearsals.  Sidenote:  official biggest regret thus far - not actually doing track.  So I put all eggs into that basket and the organ-piano sat and sat and I became one of those people who told themselves that she used to play piano and could still play a few songs, but just for fun and always on someone else's piano - preferably when they weren't listening.  I turned all energy towards getting into JMU's percussion studio (which also meant their massive drumline) - seeing it as my one tunnel option to eventually teaching elementary music - all of which happened and was perfect in all the ways I expected it to be and more. 

I should add that I never really owned any "real" drums either, other than mismatched hand-me-downs with maybe a new piece here and there like new hi-hats on a really old squeaky hi-hat stand.  Or in my mom's garage, the make-shift drum set throne that was actually a throne...of the toilet variety.  Not kidding.  It was the perfect height.  You're not alone in wondering why we had an extra toilet in the garage.  

In 2002, my third year of teaching, I bought a condo.  One can maybe guess how much wiggle room a third-year teacher's salary would allow, even though I qualified for exactly (not a cent more) than what I mortgaged. It instantly terrified me financially enough into teaching piano lessons after school on the side for extra wiggle.  I made and posted a flyer in various grocery stores and Starbucks - the kind with the little tabs to rip off with my phone number.  Easy, right?  I got my first few students this way, which eventually led to more through word of mouth in those neighborhoods.  I drove to students' homes to teach because...still no piano of my own and even if that were in the budget, I only had a one-bedroom and neighbors in very close proximity.  At the height of all this, I had 13 students in my travel studio, was in grad school at nights, and for five years co-owned a traveling music lessons company with some business-savvy friends.  I was the HR person, interviewing and hiring all of our teachers in the DC metro area.  I know all about I-9 and K-1 forms - just ask me.  I also know which back roads get you from Centreville to Fairfax the fastest during NoVa rush hour, which music stores always have certain books in stock and which do not, how to schedule evenings by neighborhoods, how to book a space for piano recitals, a decent amount about complicated tax filings, and how much your 9-yr old really practiced vs what he told you.  

Most importantly, I was miserable. Emphatically so.  My Dad had died only a few years before.  All of my closest friends were now long-distance and I was too busy to invest any real time in new friends other than work.  I hated NoVA even though I loved my teaching job, and being dangerously busy seemed to be the only way to fit in - at least with the people in my immediate surroundings.  I still owned zero instruments and had very little time to even notice.  

Except, one of my piano student families did notice.  When they decided to upgrade to a baby grand, they asked me if I was interested in their upright and for the price of free.  Um, are you serious?!  I paid to have it moved from their house into my little condo, at this point not caring about the neighbors.  I stood in my doorway like a kid on Christmas Eve and when the moving truck came and began backing up slowly to the curb, tears dripped off of my chin.  I remember not knowing exactly why.  

I cherished this piano and played it quite a bit, but it needed some repair work that I never bothered to do. I was perpetually "about to start looking" for a new piano anyway so what was the point of spending future piano money on fixing this one?   Also, I'm a drummer, remember?   

My Dad apparently also liked songs that featured the piano.  I say apparently because a lot of memories I have about him are things I decided were true, or jigsawed from multiple pieces that also seemed true.  We didn't talk much about stuff that mattered.  He was by no means a music enthusiast, but I mean to say that he liked things like Bob Seger, Little Richard - anything that put the piano sorta out front.  At one point he mentioned the song "Imagine" by John Lennon - did I know that song?  He wrote 'beautiful' and underlined it in the little red notebook he wrote in after the progressed mouth cancer meant he could no longer speak.  There was a vague plan to try to get him down the hall to the nursing home lounge where there was a piano against one wall, where I'd play it for him.  He was too weak for that by then, and I was secretly and selfishly afraid that my playing one song would turn into an obligation to play more for other guests who may hypothetically be in the room.  (Never waste an opportunity to over-think it.)  So it stayed an idea, the vague plan, though I did learn the song and still play it now and then.  I decided that he probably listens.  

I recently sold that condo after keeping it as a rental unit for a while and adding the title of landlord to my list of figure-it-outs.  The condo I taught a bajillion piano lessons to afford to live in.  The condo that was my landing pad for guesstimating through early adulthood.  The condo where the piano truck backed up.  

I set aside some money from the sale, after the obvious financial planning for college funds and monster truck attire.  I spent the next 20 months casually researching and pricing.  I knew I'd eventually buy from Rick Jones Pianos in MD (amazing warranty and trade-up program and 37 years of great reputation), so all I had to do was watch their inventory, settle on a few, then get up the nerve to make an appointment to try them out.  2020 seems determined to crush all hopes and dreams and as a small way of fighting back, this summer seemed like a good time.  I was dead-set on a Yamaha.  Yamahas are bright.  Yamahas have light action.  Yamahas are all I've really ever played at work.  Yamahas are within my realistic budget, thus I'm allowed to look at them.

But I hadn't let myself notice the thumbnail picture of the 1938 Steinway that would pop up at the bottom of the screen under "you may also like...".  The one you had to scroll left to see beyond the letters S-t-e-i in the description below the picture.  The one that was brown cherry finish from one of the last years before pausing the NYC production line to switch to WWII efforts.  The one that was priced only a minimal amount more than the amount I'd already budgeted for the Yamaha I was sure I was getting.  The one described as "perfect if you like a piano with a percussive feel" in the sales video.  The one that the sales guy played one of the Gershwin preludes and compared this piano to the Steinway model that Gershwin owned and loved.  Do I know anyone who loves NYC, jazz-age vibe, Gershwin, and feeling serendipitous?  Oh, me.  

I did very thoroughly and open-mindedly try out six Yamahas in my price window and size preference before even walking over to it.  I did ask a ton of questions about all of them.  I did negotiate the price a little in an out-of-body experience where I...wait for it...simply asked if the price was negotiable and mentioned I was a music teacher.  I did feel unworthy and sheepish playing things like "Maple Leaf Rag", "America the Beautiful" a la school accompanist, and pretending to make up arpeggio and chromatic scale patterns - you know- to get a feel for these beautiful instruments that had way more octaves than the pea green keyboard from the flea market.  The only thing missing was a watusi button, but I decided I'd manage.  

A few days ago, I stood in the window and watched another piano truck back into our driveway.  If Covid weren't a thing, I would have bear hugged all three movers for an awkwardly long time.  All I could say to them when they first positioned it in the corner was, "that's amazing".  And it is.  It sounds like shooting stars - the kind I've wished on from flea markets, from a small condo, from countless chairs sitting next to students playing their baby grand pianos.  And unbelievably it's in our "piano room", shocking my peripheral vision every time I pass and my ears every time the last note hangs.  

I've been reluctant to even tell anyone because it feels like the wrong time to be happy about something.  But this is more a very deliberate grateful than happy.  This is a seed, planted in tribute to all those piano lessons that helped put gas in my car and groceries in my refrigerator and movie tickets every now and then.  To not having to go down the hall to play John Lennon songs.  To believing in something that will last, when it turned out that that particular "year's love" didn't.  And if there's ever a time to be grateful, I've decided this is a decent one.