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November 16, 2020
I have a piano story to share...
For the past 25 years we have had a 122 year-old piano in our living room.
It is a huge mahogany wood piano that must weigh 500+ lbs.
It is a Harvard Cabinet Grand which was made in Cincinnati around 1898.
It was a piano that my grandmother bought for my mom back in 1936 for 50 dollars - which was not an insignificant amount of money back then.
My mom grew up in a tiny town called Freeland in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Her mom paid for her to take piano lessons and would open the windows of their home so the neighbors and passers by could hear the music as she played.
While my mom claims she was never a great pianist I know from growing up with that piano in our house that she was better than she admits and could play a song by ear and really loved the piano.
She loved it so much that when my dad was assigned to the Embassy in Rome in 1960 for three years she took the piano along.
Five years later, when my dad was assigned to the Embassy in Rio de Janeiro for two years the piano made the trip.
Shipping a 75 year-old piano to the tropics for two years was probably a suggestion that never appeared in any piano care instruction manual.
Over the years I took many lessons on the piano but was never able to make the connection and learn to play very well.
But...that did not stop me from playing a song called Pow Wow by someone named Rogers in Mrs. Madge Harrison's Piano Recital in June of 1967.
This is according to the program I found in the piano bench earlier today.
Anyway, the piano survived its overseas adventures and then languished in my parent's house in Vienna, VA for twenty-some years.
In 1995, through a series of events I cannot quite recall, it showed up in our living room where it stood watch as a Mute Mahogany Monolith for another twenty-some years.
A couple of months ago we decided that we needed to start clearing out some of the "extra stuff" from our house.
I asked my sister and brother if they wanted the piano but they did not.
My Mom no longer had enough space for it so I decided I would try to find a loving home for this grand old piano.
Many of my friends were skeptical that I would be able to find anyone to take it - because it was so old, out of tune and some of the keys needed to be repaired.
The consensus was that I was better off paying the junk men to cart it off to the dump.
I decided I would prove them wrong.
After a bit of research I found a site called PianoAdoption.com and posted a note about the piano with a couple of pictures.
I got no responses.
Nothing...
Nada...
Crickets...for three weeks.
Then last week I got a call from a guy near Richmond, Va. who said he wanted the piano.
I asked him if he had the equipment to move it - remember it is 500 +lbs - and he said he had a friend to help.
Not a qualified lead.
Then on Sunday I got a call from a guy named Arya who lives in DC and sounded very excited about the piano.
I told him it was old, heavy and needed work.
He said great - he really would like to get the piano for his wife.
He said he would contact a piano moving company to come pick it up.
This guy definitely sounded like a qualified lead.
A couple of hours later he had arranged for a professional piano mover to come to our house this afternoon at 3PM to pick up the piano.
I texted my Mom to tell her the piano was going to a new home.
I thought that would be the end of the story.
She then called me and said she wanted to see the piano one last time.
I told her I wasn't sure I could get over to pick her up and be back in time for the piano movers.
She said she would take an Uber.
She is not young, and we are in the middle of a Pandemic so I was not a fan of this idea - but she really, really wanted to sit and play the piano one more time.
Before I knew it she was on her way and arrived in an amazingly bubble wrapped Uber.
The driver literally had a plastic bag around the driver's seat and windows cracked open to keep the air circulating.
I tip my hat to the driver.
My Mom showed up 10 minutes before the movers and was able to sit at the piano and play it one more time.
She was happy and met the piano movers.
She makes friends with everyone.
As the piano left the house she became a bit sad and wondered what the new owners would do with the piano.
I told her Arya sounded like he really appreciated the piano and its history and would take good care of it.
But you never know.
I also told her I had asked Arya to send me a picture of the piano in its new home.
I wasn't sure if he would because after all - it was just a piano.
Well, a couple of hours later I get a text from Arya saying that the piano had arrived and they were thrilled
He also said he had a video he would like to share.
I gave him my email address.
He sent me a video of him playing the piano and thanking us for allowing him to keep the piano alive for future generations.
I was blown away.
The very old... out of tune... broken piano turned out to be full of life.
It's amazing how an inanimate object that had been sleeping for years can suddenly come to life in the hands of the right person and bring out such strong emotions.
After all, it is just a piano...
