Late Again...12 Days

Today I am thankful I can play the piano. My mother decided that she wanted her six daughters to have piano lessons. (One of my brothers is still sorry that he didn't ask for lessons, too.) So she bought a piano for $200 and used her egg-selling money to pay our piano teacher. Actually, we paid for the lessons each week with two dozen eggs and a dollar bill. Our piano teacher's goal was for us to become proficient in playing hymns so we could be useful at church. I wasn't a particularly diligent student. I practiced, but not with much fervor. I was terrified at recitals, no matter how well prepared I was. I can't remember any of my recitals where I didn't end up crying either in the middle of the performance or after the performance. And one dreadful occasion I froze after my first mistake, jumped up from the bench and ran out to my parents' car to hide and cry. My favorite piano playing, even still, is to just sit down when I'm all alone and play through a few books that I've been playing since teenager-hood and enjoy myself.

However, I eventually did get proficient at playing the hymns because I moved away from Mormon-land where so many people had taken lessons, just like me, to be able to play in church. Oddly I've ended up in congregations several times where I was the only one able to play AT ALL. So, it was me playing for Sacrament meeting, and then for Primary, too. The reason I became skilled at the hymn book is this: When I was first married, the ward where I lived was in charge of the church services at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot: boot camp. They asked me to help when they discovered I could play. Plus, I had no little children to mess with so I was free to go down there on Sunday mornings at 8:00 A.M. I practiced my three hymns diligently for the first meeting, and that all went well until the man conducting stood at the pulpit and asked the congregation what they'd like to sing for "singing time". My heart sank. These recruits were all headed for Viet Nam after they finished their time in San Diego and so naturally they wanted to sing "Come Come Ye Saints--4th verse especially" and "We Are All Enlisted" and "Behold a Royal Army" and "Onward Christian Soldiers". None of these were in my repetoire, so I was reduced to one-fingering most of them. To avoid this humiliation for the next week, I went to the church most afternoons on my way home from work and practiced the whole hymn book (well, the popular ones) until I could play almost all of them.

So, I thank my mom, the chickens, Mrs. Cranney and the Marines that I can play well enough to help out in church wherever I live. And, thanks Mom, too, for giving me that awesome old upright grand piano you bought so long ago.