My 18-year-old brother's closet is littered with the remains of his musical career. In a dark corner his saxophone is collecting dust, and various plastic recorders in shades of black, brown and white are scattered on the floor. Somewhere you can even catch a glimpse of the sad, decrepit, duct-taped bladder of his bagpipes.
His musical mess even extends to our basement, where a slightly used drum set sits alone.
""I got them because, you know, like you don't have to take lessons,"" he told me, along with the announcement he was also in the process of purchasing a six-foot long sword and a camouflage kilt.
""And mom and dad approve?"" I asked.
""Oh yeah. Mom thinks it'll be a good way for me to get rid of my angst.""
They never encouraged me like this. I quietly took piano lessons for eight years only to have my piano sold behind my back over spring break. By my mother.
It was an upright piano, with absolutely nothing special about it except that it was an awfully out-of-tune monster. Three keys just didn't play and one of the pedals didn't work, and there were ivory keys that had sharp and jagged edges. That was courtesy of a six year old who thought it best to play a piano with drumsticks. There had been talk about getting the edges filed down, but that, along with dusting the thing, never really happened. Flowers were carved in the sheet music holder, the legs curled perfectly and it was stained a warm brown.
It was, ironically, my mom's idea to buy the piano. She saw it in the corner of an antique store down the street run by a Russian man. He was notorious for breaking things rather than letting my parents buy them.
""Eh, you ken hev it,"" he said in a heavy accented drawl, taking a drag on his cigarette. ""Itz already very broken. No one play this good. Not even leettle gurl.""
A few days later a skinny man with a broken arm and a fat one smelling of cigarettes and human fecal matter delivered it, pushing it into the house with much under-the-breath swearing and dirty looks. Because I had such nice, long fingers, was a girl and was good at math, it was decided that I would be the one to suffer through lessons.
Lessons were in the basement of an old lady who lived a block away from my grandparents and suffered from a terrible smoker's cough. Usually I waited in dread for her to hobble down her stairs, yell at me for having no sense of rhythm and then compliment me on my hand placement. She'd say something about how I needed to practice more, I'd lie and say I would, I'd get a stamp for the day and be on my way.
I loved it.
But Sunday morning was my last day with my piano. My sheet music had been packed away long ago and I didn't know quite what to play in my last half hour with it. So I just played one of the three songs I had memorized. I let my hands glide over the cool, yellowed ivory keys and I started tearing up—I didn't quite know if it was because my piano was leaving the next day or because the only music I rememberd was the theme from ""Titanic."" Clouds of dust flew into the air, my mom coughed and muttered about how glad she was she'd be getting rid of the thing and have space for a desk and I stared at all the keys, sticky from years of being played by an eight year old with a bad addiction to orange juice.
I'll never let go, piano; I'll never let go.
If your mom has similarly thrown out belongings you'd rather not part with, tell Caitlin about it. Contact her at cfcieslikmis@wisc.edu.
