For the Love of Music

55/365 - For the Love of Music

Listening, Playing, Dancing.

This is my piano that I got for Christmas in 1974. It was a total surprise. I had asked for a piano every year from Christmas for years, knowing full well I wasn't going to get one. This year on my Christmas list, I hadn't put a piano on it. My Dad questioned why I didn't put it on the list this year. I said I had given up on getting one.

I had taken piano lessons for 8 years from Maude Wilson. I used the old antique upright piano that my Grandma and Papaw Stephens left in the house when they moved to California. When my Grandparents moved back, we built a new house and moved. The piano stayed at the old house with them.

I was spending the day at Grandma Grace's because we were out of school. My Mom and Dad came and got me at my Grandma's to go home and eat lunch and when we walked in, the piano was sitting in the living room. I came up the steps from the basement and I was so shocked. I could not believe I finally had a piano. I sat right down and started playing it. It was a wonderful Christmas surprise.

Every year Mrs Wilson would have a piano recital and you had to have your piece memorized. My Mom use to say that I did more practicing in the month before my recital than I did the whole rest of the year. I use to get so mad at Mrs Wilson and when my Mom picked me up from lessons I would cry and say I wanted to quit. I did that for a really long time and then one day when she picked me up and I said that, she said okay. So I quit. Its a decision I regret to this day because I can't play as well as I would like to or as well as I probably could have had I kept taking lessons.

The piano now lives in our home and this is a picture of the last recital piece that I played in my last recital.