Saying good-bye to our piano

When my older daughter was two, my parents generously offered to buy us an upright piano. Despite being a trained musician (viola), I was overwhelmed and paralyzed by the offer. By a lucky coincidence, my husband had friends moving out of town who wanted to give us their piano if we could have it moved. We jumped at the chance, and for $100, we soon had a clunky, lovable Wurlitzer spinet in our dining room. (My parents reimbursed the $100.)

At our instigation, both daughters took piano lessons during elementary school. If I’m honest, they both hated it. Against an ever increasing crescendo of protests, we abandoned the lessons. They each hold us in contempt for not having relented sooner.

Shortly after my mother died, my father started piano lessons. He was 73 and this was his third attempt. As a boy, he’d been scared away by a teacher who hit him on the knuckles. He was too preoccupied with work to practice when he tried again during his forties.

Daddy had a terrific musical ear and a very large presence that tended to dominate the room. But on this third round of lessons, no matter how much he practiced, his volume was always pianissimo. I came to love hearing the plinky plunky sounds coming from his living room when I was visiting.

When he visited us, he did the same plinky plunky practicing on our spinet. I think it gave him pleasure that he and my mother were the reason we had any piano at all.

Daddy died in June 2018. Since that time, our spinet has been collecting dust. Every six months or so, I have looked into giving it away and struck out repeatedly. For obvious reasons, I declined to relegate it to a landfill, which more than a few websites suggested.

The solution came from a dear friend and gifted violinist, who suggested a local organization called Music Link that connects instruments with music students who need them.

Last week we said good-bye to our spinet and sent it to a little girl in Virginia, but not before her piano teacher interviewed me twice to make sure the instrument was good enough for her student. I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.

In this week’s writing news, the Advanced Review Copies (ARCs) of my debut novel, THREE MUSES, showed up at my publisher’s, who tweeted a picture of it in a stack of autumn 2022 releases. I’m really tickled, although it sounds like it will be two more months before I actually get my hands on it.

Finally, I’m happy to share my interview with Natasha Brown in The Millions. Her debut novel, ASSEMBLY, is a searing and poetic look at being Black and British in the financial industry. In my view, Brown “has mastered the deadpan delivery; her sentences are lean and fraught. At 102 pages, Assembly is a treasure of concision.”

Til soon. May you be well and thriving.

Love, Martha