Breaking up with other people's expectations

A piano has been part of my daily life since I was six or seven years old. My relationship with it was complex at first, then strained, and finally cold, sterile and nonexistent. It finally became just furniture, something to dust, a convenient horizontal surface for lining up jack o'lantern sculptures and nutcrackers.

My friend Janet, who lived across the street when we were very young, comes from a family of musicians. Both parents are professional musicians and music educators, and everyone in the family oozes music from their souls. Talent-wise, any member of that clan carries more of the gift in a fingernail clipping than I could develop with a lifetime of study. One fall afternoon, in about kindergarten or so, I was at Janet's house, tinkering around on their beautiful grand piano, and I memorized a small, one-handed song. I thought it was cute and fun, and I arrived home later that day proudly announcing that I could play something. (And yes, I can still remember the children's exercise with proper fingering.)

I shared this news with my parents and resident grandmother, who jumped in with all six feet and ran with it.

Piano lust and piano plans monopolized the dinner conversation. Nobody wanted to hear I'd also learned what hobnail glass was that same afternoon when Janet's younger brother nearly broke her mother's beautiful white lemon bowl, or that Janet's sister had a wonderful seashell collection. 

"Jillie wants to play the piano!" 

"Yes, yes, she does. She'll be very good at it."

"I wish I'd had the chance to play the piano."

Ohhhhhhhhhh, they were so excited. So happy. So proud. So heartbreakingly, terrifyingly, nauseatingly proud, especially my resident grandmother. Her much-hated older sister, long dead, had married a wealthy man who gave her a piano. Sadie learned to play, apparently quite well, and my grandmother never recovered from her sister's victory. (Jealousy and resentment run deep on that side of the family.)

I sat, listening and trying to choke down dinner, as they told each other over and over how much I wanted to play the piano, and what wonderful news that was. 

But, see, here's the thing -- learning the little exercise was, for me, a lark, an hour's diversion. I didn't want to play the piano. But I lacked the courage to stop them in mid-bubble and tell them. 

Sure enough, Christmas rolled around and my grandmother bought me a piano.

Then my mother signed me up for lessons, not coincidentally, with a concert pianist who moonlighted as her own music appreciation teacher in a night class.

Drill, drill, drill, fingering exercises, notation exercises, simple songs, "themes" from well-known classical pieces.

Every night I had to practice, after homework but before television or playing or recreational reading or any of the thousand things I'd rather have been doing. Piano was woven into my days before I knew what was happening. And, uncharacteristically for me, I had no fight -- I was paralyzed, scared to tell them I never wanted it. 

Birthday -- a metronome.

Twice a year -- a recital. My "other grandmother," Tia Helen, attended along with Mother, Daddy and Neenie. They beamed as I plunked out Fur Elise, Air on a G String, Canon in D (oh, sure, it's all the rage to hate Canon in D NOW, but I loathed that monster when I still had Mercurochrome on my knees! Take that, trendies!), Moonlight Sonata, and no end of pop-arranged Christmas "standards." 

The concert pianist eventually stopped giving private lessons, and I thought I'd been pardoned. But no, Mother and Neenie were determined to find another teacher. I ended up in a private studio run by a very nice, talentless man whose overriding ambition was to sell as much sheet music as he could. I later lined a birdcage with the sheet music to "Around the World in 80 Days" and I hope my late, lamented parakeet Little Blue did as much damage as he could to the thing. 

Finally, by my junior year in high school, I was sufficiently busy with a heavy academic load and enough extracurriculars to stop taking piano lessons. On the night after the final recital, my parents and grandmother reprised their long-ago conversation about my passion and devotion for all things pianistic.

"Well, after she's out of college, she can play again, whenever she wants to."

"Yes, it's nice she has the piano. She can pick it up again when she has children."

At no point did anyone address me directly about the matter, and STILL I didn't say anything.

Time passed and the piano sat mute. Once in a blue moon, I'd reluctantly plunk out a piece or two at Christmas, but my heart was never in it. Now and then the cat strolled across the keys, unharmoniously startling everyone present. The piano moved with me a few times.

When my son was six or seven, my mother offered him piano lessons. He accepted, politely and with warmth. But I watched closely and saw no heat, no passion, no fire. Finally, one night I asked him if he really enjoyed it and wanted to keep playing. After a few minutes of lip-chewing and hemming and hawing, he stammered out "No, I don't."

That was it -- it was over -- we were done. I never found my voice to advocate for myself, but I damn sure wasn't going to let the whole sordid thing repeat in another generation. So I told my mother he was going to stop taking lessons and stop playing.

Betcha can guess what happened next.

"Well, he has a bit of a foundation, and you have the piano. Now when he's older, he'll pick it up when he's ready and he can just play when he wants to."

By then, it wasn't even worth mentioning. My son and I shared a glance and a wink, and my mother rhapsodized about how much he'd eventually enjoy playing.

My son has grown up and my mother has died (a part of me hopes she and Neenie are rockin' some ragtime piano in heaven). I began feeling truly weighed down, obligated by and to that piano. It came to be infused with some sort of totemic power over me. To not have that piano would mean Mother and Neenie really are dead, and that I never turned into the accomplished pianist of their dreams. 

But it's true. They are dead, piano or no piano, and nothing can change that. And I'm NOT the accomplished pianist of their dreams, I never will be, and I don't want to be. But still the weight, the power, the sense of duty persisted.

So I did what any sane adult would do. I held my breath, closed my eyes, and offered a free piano to anybody who was willing to get it out of here. A lovely woman adopted it for her young son, who is genuinely interested in all things keyboard, and who has actually been longing for a piano.

As of about an hour ago, I'll never see that instrument again. And I don't miss it. I miss THEM, and giving the piano away has stirred up some tears and clawed at my heart. But I'm free.

Go in peace, I said to the piano as the nice piano-mover guy wheeled it out the door. Go make someone happy, someone who can really love you, and leave me to contemplate the banjo.