My Grammie's Piano

I don't post much about my dad. There are a lot of intricacies in our relationship that are best left off the Internet rather than trying to explain them. Gift giving is one of those intricacies. We struggled. I never seemed to get him what he wanted, and he gave me some pretty odd ones. I'll leave it at that. He did have at least one very great success.

When I was about seven, I started trying to teach myself to play the piano. When my parents caught onto my interest, my grandmother very graciously gave us her Wurlitzer upright. I loved that piano. It made me sad when my parents decided to get a baby grand. But that baby grand was pretty awesome, so I didn't dwell on it too much.

My dad, however, didn't want to part with my grammie's piano. He knew that it would be awhile before I'd be able to afford a piano for myself, so he kept it. He put that piano and a few items of furniture in storage until I could use it. When we graduated a few years ago, it was one of the first things he asked. "Can I ship your piano to you now?"

I won't go into detail about the nightmare that was getting our piano up to the second floor apartment so that it could sit there unused for a year (I was so paranoid about bothering the neighbors I only played on Sundays with the damper pedal on). However, it now sits in our house where it's played and loved. It just looks like it's supposed to be there. If my dad hadn't gone to the trouble of storing it all those years (and shipping it all the way to AZ), my precious piano and I would never have been reunited. And the primary would've been without a sub for a few weeks since I would've forgotten how to play.