The Piano

Somewhere around fifty years ago, my grandparents bought a piano from a family down the road in a little white house with red shutters. They moved it from the wall where it had sat for most of its life, and hauled it four miles home to their tiny farm house so their kids could take piano lessons.

That piano sat in that farm house for forty-some years, probably. Long enough for five kids to take lessons, grow up, have children of their own, and move out of the state. It was played--sometimes well, sometimes poorly. Sometimes it sat for a month without being touched. Other times it was pounded upon by inexpereinced fingers who just wanted to make noise. On occasion, an apt cousin of mine would sit and plunk out "Heart and Soul" or "Chopsticks" some other lame piano lesson song that everyone manages to learn in their lifetime. And once in a while--on specal occasions--someone with a little more musical aptitutude would sit for a moment and play a hymn or two using the old music collection from the piano bench.

Five years ago, my grandparents moved out of their farm house, four miles up the road to "town". Ironically, the house they moved into was the little white house with red shutters--the piano's original home. And in the move, while furniture was all squeezed into new places, the piano found its way back to the same place it had sat fifty years ago. Against the same wall. Same keys, same legs, just a little more worn now. And that tired old piano sits there, while new fingers find their way to its keys and play. Sometimes poorly, sometimes well.

I feel like that piano lately. Like I've spent most of my life being played and learned from, got familiar with that life, and then suddenly, I'm back right where I started more tired and worn than I was to begin with. Backed up against a wall, easily overlooked and used as a shelf instead of what my purpose really is. Seemingly nothing to show for all of the pain and trials, all of the pushing and plunking and playing. BUt maybe, like the piano, there are still new things in store. Sure, there will always be the annoying people who have to sit down and play "Heart and Soul", always litle kids who want to make noise. But maybe there are others waiting to play--others who weren't around when I was first in that starting place.

Two years ago in the middle of a snow storm, a visitor stopped over at the little white house with red shutters. He had just moved into one of the onyl other houses in the town and wanted to come say hi. He'd liked the loook of the open Montana prairie, the quietness of few neighbors. He'd found a little school house for sale in Four Buttes with a trailer beside it. And the school house had its own piano. Turns out, this visitor was a professional musician from Idaho, and he had wanted to find a place to work on his music without being interrupted. Our excited relatives urged him to play for us, so he sat down at the tired piano and plunked out some fantastic ragtime tunes--ones he'd written himself, and other composed ones. songs that no one in our family had the talent to play. Songs that that old piano had probably never heard before. songs that could make the old keys jump and dance. I think if that piano were alive, it would have jiggled across the floor in such excitement, thinking "I've waited my whole life for this!"

So maybe that's why I'm back up against this same wall I started at long ago. Maybe I'll go other places before I make it back here again. But some day, the experience and wear from being played through the years will pay off, and I can be used by a master Musician and dance in glee, singing, "I've waited my whole life for this! This is what I was made for."