How I left and then came back

A few years ago, I started taking piano lessons again after a 30-year hiatus. It felt like a homecoming. It was wonderful! I hadn't realized how much I missed playing the piano until I started again.

Don't get me wrong; I never took a break from making music. I had been singing for all of those years. I was in the choir at my church, and I even took voice lessons for a while. Then my vocal teacher moved away. I tried hiring a new teacher, but she and I simply didn't work well together. So I went back to just singing in the choir.

I had two issues that kept me from my piano for all those years. As a young adult, I had dreadful performance anxiety. I went to a small college with un-insulated practice rooms. I did not want anyone to hear me practicing. I was dreadfully self-conscious about it, even though the building was isolated from everything else on our rural campus. Only the other musicians would ever hear me. One day, my piano professor poked his head into the room while I was practicing my Czerny. He was a lovely man with a wonderful sense of humor and a spectacular talent. He suggested in a very kindly manner that I practice more slowly. I was mortified, and I stopped playing.

My other issue was my piano. I have a hundred-year-old Cable-Nelson "Upright Grand." It has a nice sound, but when I got it (about ten years after I had quit playing), it was broken. It was on offer for free from a friend of a friend, who had no idea that his piano was falling apart. When I went to pick it up, I played it a little, decided the problems I was having were probably due to kids spilling juice on the keyboard, and decided it was worth taking home. I had driven there in a $90 rental truck, so my piano cost me $90 to acquire.

Then I called a technician (Thomas) to come over and tune it for me. The verdict was grim: my soundboard was cracked, and what was worse, my bass bridge was loose.  Thomas offered to take the piano off my hands. The action was in great shape. He could use it for parts. Or, he said, I could loosen and unstring the bass, being careful to run the ends of the wires onto a bent hanger or something similar. They needed to stay in the right order. I could then glue my bass bridge back into place, making my piano playable, if not perfect (due to the cracked soundboard).

Ten years passed before I finally took those strings off and glued the bridge into place. We now had a piano! I used it to practice my choral music and to find pitches for practicing my vocal exercises. My children played around on it, making a racket and occasionally playing something truly beautiful. My husband made noises about getting rid of it in order to free up space in the dining room. I consistently resisted that idea.

I don't recall exactly what prompted me to start looking for a teacher again. One day at choir rehearsal, I wondered out loud if our director, MG, would be willing to take on a student. He is a virtuoso pianist and an accomplished composer, and I know he has taught piano in the past, so I figured it could happen. Well, the gal sitting next to me reminded me that PT, a member of our congregation, earns a living as a piano teacher. So I asked P, and she turned out to be the perfect fit for me as a teacher. She is now the president of an active music teachers' society, and I feel privileged to be one of her students.

I am delighted to be playing again. Since I began taking lessons over three years ago, I have started composing and arranging (in a small way), I have accompanied several worship services, and I have joined a concert band. I have helped run a summer music camp, and I teach group lessons at the Boys' and Girls' Club, where I work. I would like to teach private lessons, as well. I am exploring all sorts of ways to incorporate making music into my life. It's such a relief to be doing this again. I can see now that the piano bench is one of the places where I am meant to linger in this life.