One of the few regrets I have in life is that I didn't keep up with my music, the piano and violin I learned as a child, the guitar I taught myself to strum as I sang, and my voice, which I have sadly neglected.
When I was in junior high and high school, I loved to sing but was so self-conscious, fearing that I didn't have a good voice, that I wouldn't sing when anyone could hear me, not even in church. Somehow, by the time I was in college, I had gained enough courage to sing folk songs and play guitar for audiences and took a semester of chorus, which I thoroughly enjoyed, especially singing Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana."
Unfortunately, by that time, I no longer had a piano or my violin (my younger sister was still in school playing the family instrument) and without the instruments at hand, I was more or less forced to give up on them. I graduated and lived around the world, where I continued to sing, including one stint with a German choir, but I missed the piano particularly. It had been my outlet for joys and sorrows, a place to express emotion and teach myself new pieces.
I only had nine months of piano lessons, when I was in the fifth grade. Music "ran in my family." My father had studied to become a concert pianist but became a chemist instead. He could play virtually anything, though he lacked the "feel" to make the music really resonate emotionally. My grandfather played piano, violin and clarinet, and was always in a band. In addition to playing music and singing, I loved to dance to it, making up my own choreography. I danced on stage, too, as a teen.
The reason I only had nine months of lessons was that my teacher, a university piano instructor, wanted to make me into a professional, classical pianist. She made me work hard. I didn't mind practicing. It was her harshness that I had trouble with, and the fact that she didn't want me to do any other activities.
I was in a stage play called "The Patchwork Girl of Oz" and I was the Patchwork Girl. The week of final rehearsals, there was a conflict with my piano lesson. I asked my teacher whether I could take my lesson at a different time. She raked me over the coals, told me I needed to decide what I really wanted to do with my life, and sent me home in tears. My parents decided that after the spring recital, they would not send me back.
My father tried to teach me, but that didn't work out well at all, and less than two years later, he was dead and my mother couldn't afford to pay for piano lessons.
I never stopped playing, like some kids do when the lessons stop. I played and practiced on my own. I bought new sheet music and piano books with money I earned babysitting.
When I was living in Germany, in a small village, I spotted a beautiful Jugenstil piano in my landlord's living room. I asked him whether he played, and he said he didn't. He had acquired the piano from someone whose home he remodelled. They hadn't wanted it.
I expressed admiration for the beautiful old instrument, and to my surprise, he had his brother and six local farmers bring a hay wagon over and haul it to my house. It needed tuning, but soon I was playing daily. After not having a piano, and not practicing, for years, it was a keen disappointment that I could no longer play as well as I had when I was seventeen. I could read the music, but I couldn't coordinate all my fingers and read it at the same time. No matter how much I practiced, I never regained my earlier skill, but I still enjoyed playing until we moved away and I "lost" my piano again.
From the time they were babies until they were in junior high, I sang songs to my sons at bedtime every night. I don't know whether they remember that, but I know how much I enjoyed it.
Through the years, after I left Germany and no longer had Hanni's piano, I still yearned to be play and sing again, and I promised myself that when I moved to Florida, I would. Now I sing with two choruses, one a women's chorus, the other a mixed chorus that sings German and American songs. It's a new challenge to remember to read the notes, count the rhythm, and stay on key, but I'm enjoying it.
