Keys in the song of life

Funny how one's memory of a thing forms and then you find you've blurred the details.

I learned today the piano I grew up with - which I bequeathed to someone long ago - has found yet another new home. They sent a picture. I didn't remember the thatched woven fronting or the Wright-like wooden music stand.

I remember it was an Everett upright, and that the right front corner was worn and rounded by years of my mother leaning on it as she taught piano lessons in our living room.

Lots of hands have touched those keys, from the groping aimless fingers of her countless elementary students whose lack of practice was painfully evident, to the occasional bright student who might still today be able to play Moonlight Sonata, to the one prodigy who began on that piano and now is a professional in the Twin Cities who makes a modest living at it.

And, of course, my impatient attempts to coax music from that piano, from hymns to 60s folk songs to my faking renditions of 70s rock music. I used that piano to try to impress a girl, and to vent adolescent rage. (In one particular tantrum, I banged on middle C so forcefully the hammer broke inside. It wasn't a sin you could overlook, like dropping a piece of rarely used fine china no one would notice until next Thanksgiving. The broken piece required immediate confession and replacement.)

But apparently, it's still playing music, which shows that things can outlast people and adapt to being useful to others who will never know the stories they could tell.