Keeping Silent

This past November, I moved my piano from my parents' house, where it had lived since I left for college over 10 years ago, to my own home an hour away. I still take a second glance sometimes when I pass through the living room, amazed at its solid, swooping curves, at the fact that I own it. The feeling of playing it never grows less wonderful. But I've hesitated over and over to write this blog post, because when you use words to tell a happy ending, someone can take it away. I've waited to tell about New Year's Eve 2012, when we stuffed handfuls of Hanukkah candles into small flower vases and lit them all at once, counted down with the people in Times Square, toasted midnight with sparkling wine - and after some of us had smoked cigars on the back porch and everyone had come back inside, I played a song for my friends - the only time I'd ever played my piano at one in the morning, and my happiest New Year yet. I'm afraid to tell about the happy endings, because too much has been happening in between. Relationships and old illusions have been dying before my eyes, I've been having to choose between my own survival and measuring up to others' expectations, an old world of religion and conservatism has become as dangerous to my soul as a concentration camp. I'm afraid, I've been so afraid my whole life. I've learned not to tell my story because when you do, you give someone power to take it from you and use it against you. As I type these words I can almost see them spiraling away from me like white smoke, disappearing into the darkness. Yet my piano is still there in the living room.

Two Ways of Looking at a Piano

Being a somewhat postmodern 18-year-old, I started telling myself a story right away about my piano, why I had it, what it meant. I believed that having this piano meant that God must love me, that I must mean more to Him than just one of the faceless multitudes He died for. I was astounded at the level of trust and care that my piano teacher had shown in loaning me the additional money I needed. Maybe God had a face; maybe He wanted me to be happy. That was the story I told. But I look back now and listen to another story that was only a whisper all those years - the story I actually believed. In the real story, God had given me more than I deserved out of the scarce resources of the world. Maybe He gave it to me so I would stop bothering Him. I couldn't ask for other things because already I had too much, and I owed Him a lifetime of gratitude. My value had risen from $25 to $2000, no higher.

The Dream That Came True

The mahogany baby grand was a 6o-year-old Baldwin that had been almost completely rebuilt on the inside by a piano technician. It was showcased in the technician's basement, the lid open. It had nearly perfect ivory keys, hardly yellowed, and almost everything inside was new - the strings, the hammers, the rest of the action. He had put a shim in the original soundboard. I sat down to play it and its tone was slightly mellow, almost exactly the sound I'd been looking for all those years. Secretly I'd wanted a mahogany finish, too, but that was the lowest specification on my list. The piano was $2000 out of my price range. At my piano lesson that week, I told my teacher that I'd have to keep looking. But she loaned me $2000 instead.

The Girl Who Won't Go Away

I did eventually start seriously considering a career in music. We had moved back to the greater D.C. area where the piano studios were more competitive, and it turned out that I was a good pianist. I started saving up for a grand piano when I was around 12. It was difficult for me to explain to people why I was saving for an instrument rather than for a car or college. Also, why not buy an upright instead, which would be less expensive? But I stuck to my goal all through my teen years, even after I finally decided to pursue writing as a career rather than music. When my zero coupon and CD matured, I dropped the cash into my piano savings account. When I look back on the girl who did all that, part of me is amazed. But part of me is just ashamed, for wanting so much, for being different, for lugging around a dream that was way too big for me and stuck out of my life like a sore thumb.

Becoming Me

Third grade was my first year of piano lessons, the year my parents bought the piano, my first year being homeschooled. I had also decided by now that I wanted to be a novelist. I had started scribbling stories after discovering the American Girl books. I loved playing the piano as much as I loved writing, but I didn't think about pursuing it as a career. The idea simply didn't occur to me. Playing the piano was personal, beautiful, fun, a way to express myself without words. My favorite things to do, I decided, were reading, writing, and playing piano. And they still are. I was only 8 years old, but I had already defined my identity - who I was, stretched out as rigid as steel wires on a cast iron frame.

The First Piano

When I turned 6, my grandfather died and my family moved to another state. One Christmas, my grandmother gave us an electric keyboard. Eventually I started taking piano lessons with a local piano teacher who was in a wheelchair due to an accident when she was a missionary in Africa. It was okay practicing on the keyboard, but I needed a real piano. My parents heard about an estate sale nearby with a piano being sold, so they took me there. We picked our way through the clutter of a dead person's furniture to an imposing upright piano, paneled with solid, dark brown wood. I played "Do, a Deer" on the discolored ivory keys. The people standing around clapped as though I had done something amazing. The piano was $25. "We'll take it," my father said. I'll never forget seeing his hand holding out the payment to the estate agent. I felt like I was being given the universe.

Once Upon a Time . . .

. . . there was a little girl who wanted a piano. My grandfather, a bald man with a big round belly, played the piano. He had a sophisticated-looking black console with wide, heavily weighted ivory keys and a mellow sound. I loved the feeling of pressing those keys. I remember my brother got in trouble for driving a matchbox car across the keyboard, but my grandfather didn't mind me playing the piano, as long as I was very, very careful.