hey peeps

how is every little thing?

it’s spring. have you noticed? i can’t stop smiling.

all the windows are open and i’m having sugar-free chocolate pudding. meh. next time it’s pistachio pudding with gobs of real sugar. still smiling, though.

so the daughter had her first ever piano recital this weekend. i’m a little bit thrilled. she’s been in lessons for a mere 3 months but her teacher thinks highly of little fish jumping right into big oceans so on saturday she waited her turn and bounded up the stage steps and looked so small but fierce in her purple and white easter dress that i couldn’t help but sniff back a little tear.

she did beautifully. as beautifully as one can do a song that’s half a page long and involves only a few fingers. if you ask her mother, swan lake was never more lovely, and if you ask her teacher, the expression and rhythm were flawless, and if you ask her big brother, the sheet cake with buttercream frosting was outstanding. and there was punch with sherbet. i always tend to think any event which serves punch with sherbet is worth its salt. but that’s just me.

my first teacher was an odd but nice woman who played hymns at church and was an amazing musician. she embellished those songs to within an inch of sin and i’ve yet to see anyone’s fingers move as fast doing anything. she (handily) had a ceramic shop set up in her basement, and mothers would leave for the lure of greenware cats and frogs while students toiled away upstairs, sitting nervously on mrs. c.’s polyester brocade piano bench while fritz, her ancient, choleric, and fully-clawed siamese cat occasionally swatted our ankles from his perch behind the pedals. lesson day was not my favorite day.

my sisters, older and much wiser, enjoyed telling me i should be glad of fritz and the sweaty polyester bench, as they’d had to endure miss kromberg, a crusty german woman of uncertain age, thick accent and definite teaching ability. she was strict and fair and apparently intolerable. it was the early 70’s and simon and and his pal garfunkel were it, so my sisters would beg to play bridge over troubled water as one of their lesson pieces. their story has miss kromberg reaching her paul and art limit one day and shouting out a staccato, “no. more. troubled. bridge!” i love that story.

but even sans miss kromberg i still hated the lessons. for years i would hide my books, try to rig the timer so i didn’t have to practice 30 minutes (later it would become an entire hour!), feign all types of illness - it never worked. my mom had experience, you see, with my “troubled bridge” sisters, and she wouldn’t let me quit.

i endured only one recital in the early years. mine was a much worse fate. my teacher up and left church one day and since i was 12 and had a whiff of training i was chosen to be her replacement. you may think “knees knocking” is simply an expression but i assure you, it really happens. a little fish had been unceremoniously tossed into a large body of water. and there was absolutely no cake in sight.

but i survived, and thrived, and sometimes there’s nothing better for shy and fearful than to be thrust into a spot that makes it impossible to remember those things exist. i’ve been playing for more than 30 years now, first for church, then for choir and band and every other geeky high school ensemble you can imagine, then in college i was a wedding singer. oh yes. the stories i could tell you. and might, someday. i have more lionel richie and dan fogelberg sheet music than anyone else on the planet. i can’t bear to throw it away. you think i’m kidding. i also dabbled in synthesizers and country bands and found places that let me put an empty martini glass on top of the case and play my most favorite songs from one of my most favorite eras.

piano skills may not be the most marketable but they led me to travel, scholarships, lots of interesting people met and great music performed, a good discipline to keep going back to for my own enjoyment. i’d be tickled pink if my girl picked the same trail.

but i’m getting ahead of myself. she’s 7, and we’re only 3 months in. so far things are wonderful, but i’ll let you know if her teacher gets a siamese cat.