The Piano Under the Stairs

My first awareness of who I am happened when I was very small. My parents took me with them to visit my maternal Grandmother in southern Ohio. For some reason, we went over to the "old house" to visit whomever lived there, so I must have been VERY small—like 4 or 5. Old enough to wander around on my own unsupervised, as long as I was within earshot and easy rescuing.

When we visited, we stayed with Grandma at her victorian farmhouse, the one on M Road. That's the house my Mother grew up in (and Sister, too, for a few years after her own father died). It's the house my Grandma grew up in. But not the first house. The first house Grandma grew up in was referred to as the Old Brick House. It's an impressive all-brick mid-1800s farmhouse in a tiny hamlet across the road from where Uncle H lived when he was alive. He and his boys farmed the land the house sat on (still do, or at least one son does).

That's where we were, at the Old Brick House. The adults were visiting amongst themselves. The older kids were off playing outside. I must've been too little to go outside with them, so I was exploring this fascinating old "mansion". (To me it was a mansion.) I found an upright piano tucked under the stairwell in the darkened hallway. I gingerly lifted the keyboard cover—not the whole thing because it was much too heavy, but the first hinged portion—I flipped it up and open... and my fingers experimented.

Oh my goodness, each of these white planks makes a different sound!

Randomly, my tiny digits walked the ivories, testing the sounds. Something clicked inside of me—there was a structure to this, and if I could figure it out, I could recreate the sounds I heard in my head. By accident, I missed a couple notes on the way down the scale I was exploring and discovered intervals. Didn't know what they were, of course, but my ear recognized that it corresponded to America The Beautiful.

Intrigued, I fiddled with it. Play the interval. Try to find the next notes. Miss. Hit. Miss. Hit. Hit. Repeat. Memorize. Not long after that, I was very slowly picking out the notes for America The Beautiful. Then I figured out, by ear, a couple of other little songs I'd heard before.

After a time, my Mother came to rescue the piano from me (I was probably annoying some of the pickier elders with the "noise" I was making). But before I was whisked away, I said, "Look Mom!" and I carefully picked out America the Beautiful.

I think I got a "that's good, dear" before she shut the top and dragged me back to the fold. But every chance I got, I found myself magnetically drawn back to the amazing noise maker (much to their annoyance), and everywhere we went, if there was a piano around, that's where you found me.

Shortly thereafter, I found myself enrolled in a children's choir, accompanied by a young gal who played guitar, and the rest is history. Guitar lessons began two years later.

It must've frustrated my parents to have to practice constant vigilance around me, keeping me close by when I was hypnotically drawn to pianos—which EVERYONE had, of course, but us—but... I have to wonder now... what went through their minds when they realized what they were hearing wasn't just tuneless banging, but was the actual melody to America the Beautiful? What thought did they have when they realized it was me picking out the tune, that I'd never been near a piano, that I had no musical training whatsoever (yet—I was four!), and that I was not only doing it completely by ear, but also at the right pitch AND from memory?

It must have blown their minds.

That I can remember this hazy moment so vividly is mind-blowing, as well.

Just a few moments ago, I realized something else. I need to confirm this with my cousin JH, but I think it's a good chance that I have that very piano in my possession now. When JH's mother, V (my Mother's cousin, daughter of Grandma's sister), was moved out West (where JH lives) to ride out her days in a nursing home, JH had to clear out the house. V said she wanted me to have the pianos (yes, plural) because I was the musical one in the family. JH said I didn't have to take both unless I wanted them, because the one was so broken down and in need of repair, but it was there because it'd been in the family for so long. Of course, I took it along with the refinished one, fully expecting that one day I'd have it restored.

It's been sitting in the garage at my old house since the day I moved it in. Untouched.

But it occurred to me today, that that piano may well be the VERY piano that was tucked under the stairs at the Old Brick House—the very piano upon which my fingers first cautiously and bravely picked out a familiar tune, launching my journey into the world of music.

No wonder I have major subconscious blocks about getting rid of it.