For the Love of Pianos

My mother has spoken to me of very few regrets. This doesn't surprise me because Herculean would carry her name if she had only been born a few millennia earlier. She successfully managed the finances for fourteen children on a single income, turned clay dirt into fertile soil, and cooked for a mini-army every single day. I have done the math, and even with the last name Newton, it just doesn't add up. She was able to take an immovable object, collide it with an unstoppable force and only good came of it.

But on a few occasions she has shared with me a sorrow that we didn't have a piano in the house while the children were growing up. I have let her know that even if we had owned a piano, there wouldn't have been a place for us to put it. It took a number of years and several children getting married and moving out before my mother was able to realize her dream of having a piano in her own home. It wasn't anything fancy but it fulfilled a lifelong goal.

One day I happened by a local thrift store and I saw an old pick-up truck leaving the parking lot with a beautiful piano in the bed. My heart filled with abundant joy as I thought about the longing my mother had felt for her own piano. I thrilled with the thought that this family was going to hear the ringing sound of beautiful chords to accompany their lives. You can mark the progress of your family by the books, recitals and performances that your children perform. The lilting sound of the piano will ring as you reflect in those moments before falling into blissful sleep.

As I envisioned this happy family surrounding their much anticipated piano and singing songs I noticed that the piano began to sway. Even before it happened I knew that the walls of the truck bed would not contain the falling piano. As the truck turned onto the road the balance was lost and shards of flying wood cut more than the air, they penetrated my heart. But the intense horror I felt was nothing compared to the mother who leapt from the cab, running back to the broken pieces lying scattered in the street.

My windows were rolled up in my air-conditioned car so I did not hear the sound of her wailing. But I could see the tears streaming from her eyes as she grabbed her hair and pulled and tugged. Eventually she collapsed as she seemed to bury herself under the very pavement where that piano had died. I could see that a piece of her soul had vanished and I burst into tears myself. I have been sad before. I have even been angry. But I have never seen woe as I did that afternoon on that afternoon from a mother who had witnessed the destruction of joyful essence before her very eyes.