Sweet, sweet music

Some of the ivory keys are chipped on the tips. The pads, hidden, are threadbare. A stain on the front, left long ago. There’s a fairly fresh scar along the edge, left by an impatient child forcing the lid open.
Every time I dust the keys, the darkened wood, it’s as if this piano is calling, “play me.” But it can’t coerce from these fingers the magic it can from Mom’s.
“Stodart, New York,” it reads as the lid is lifted.
If it could tell a story, it would tell of its journey to Los Angeles, given in the early 1940s by loving parents to their youngest child Mary, whom they called Molly. This old upright followed Molly to Pico and then to Whittier. It embarked on its journey first to California’s Imperial Valley when Mom married Dad in 1949, to Melrose, Ore., and Bremerton, Wash., before being loaded into the U-Haul for a return trip to Imperial. It sat for more than 20 years in the Imperial Community Church parsonage and, when Dad retired in his 70s, moved into our home.
It’s been tuned, burnished and played countless times over these seven decades.
My earliest memories are of Mom sitting at that piano. Playing it comforted her in times of stress, cheered her in sadness, shared her heart in times of praise. Her fingers would trip effortlessly over the octaves, cajoling haunting, uplifting, sweet melodies.
Sitting here, looking at this simply crafted music-maker, I remember winters in our Melrose home, huddled in the dining room, the only truly warm place in that home built in the 1800s. No insulation. No central heating. A furnace in the dining room our only source of heat. The pipes froze nearly every winter and we’d slip and slide down the hill to bathe in the church sinks. It truly was a delightful adventure for a child.
And Mom, tired after a day of teaching at Hucrest Elementary, after coming home to feed her brood, after putting some of us to work helping her grade papers, would sit on the piano bench and just play.
“Great is Thy Faithfulness.” “The Old Rugged Cross.” “How Great Thou Art.” “Isn’t the Love of Jesus Something Wonderful?” Scottish ballads. Irish lullabies.
Today Mom’s fingers are aged, gnarled, and pain accompanies her playing. But so does peace.
When Dad was hospitalized awhile back and life as we knew it had changed forever, Mom went indoors, sat down at the piano and played, her aged fingers cajoling sweet music from the aged keys.
Sweet, sweet music.