The Keyboard in My Family Room
One evening a few weeks ago I posted a picture of my dog Buddy to Facebook. Shortly thereafter I received a comment from Beth in her loving, calling me out way that said, “Umm excuse me, what is that KEYBOARD in the background?!! I think we need to hear some of that from you!” I responded, “Something I will begin tinkering with again. I’ve had it for years with the intention to re-learn to play. It’s a long story…maybe I’ll write an article about it.
Have you ever started something yet due to circumstances beyond your control you were no longer able to continue it?
When I was a child, I was always creating something. Before I started this journey of self-work it seemed like I had lost all creativity and life “just happened”. I have since learned I am still a very creative person by nature. All of that creativity is still inside me. I am creating every day in most everything I do…cooking, gardening, you name it! Though I am creating every day, there is still something missing.
There have been two key creative passions in my life. I’ve already mentioned a few times throughout my articles that I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and well, after many, many years of not writing anything, I slowly began putting words on paper again, very sparingly at first, yet now, here I am, a monthly writer for Held in the Heart!
Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.
I have no particular favorite genre of music. I pretty much like it all. I can still remember playing my mom’s old Elvis Presley 45 records from the 1950s and dancing around the basement like a wild child with my brothers, as well as listening to the old transistor radio and taping songs with a cassette recorder. Some of you are probably too young to remember either.
One of my earliest memories of a favorite song of my own from the radio was in 1971 when I was 8 years old. It was called “I am Woman,” by Helen Reddy. In no time I was belting out every word, every time I heard the song. I fell in love with the Carpenters, John Denver, Glen Campbell, Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass, KC and the Sunshine Band…you name it, I liked it! I also had this uncanny ability to remember lyrics to songs very quickly, which to this day I can pretty much remember every lyric to every song I’ve ever liked. This ability came in very handy in high school when I had to learn and memorize things. I would put them on the old cassette recorder and listen over and over again and wound up acing tests!
Anyway, I digress…
When I was 12 years old, I wanted to learn to play the piano.
Somehow my parents found an old used piano and got it down into the basement of our home and I began to take piano lessons from the neighbor across the street. I found that I didn’t have to practice much because I was able to do what they called “play by ear”. I thought this was pretty awesome at the time, as I could hear a song and pick out the notes on the piano. Unfortunately, though, because of this ability I never learned to read music well. I took lessons for about a year and even had my first piano recital, playing a tune called Mexican Fiesta, a lively little piece which I loved to play. I can still hear the tune echoing in my mind just mentioning it. I was even learning to play The Entertainer. It was during this time that my dad took a different job and we had to move. The house my parents found was newly built and to my dismay the piano would not fit in the basement and there wasn’t any room for it anywhere else in the house, so my dreams of playing the piano went by the wayside.
Fast forward fifteen years. A co-worker had an old upright piano he was giving away and I was so excited that I would again have a piano! That dream was still alive! I found a piano teacher, as the one from my childhood, had since moved away, and I started back with the basics, trying to learn to read music and practice, practice, practice. However, after twenty years of typing, on first a typewriter and then computers, I couldn’t seem to make my fingers work like they were supposed to on the piano. As a child, my fingers would glide effortlessly over the keys without any hesitation. Now my fingers seemed stuck in the typing position and no amount of practice helped.
Back then I didn’t have much patience for anything, least of all myself.
I didn’t know what self-love and giving myself some grace even meant. I was harsh on myself for not being able to play immediately and so after only a couple of months I gave up. I wound up giving that piano away, but still, deep down inside I wanted to play again.
Have you ever given up on something, but known in your soul you hadn’t given up completely? Well, that was me and I must have complained about giving away the piano enough that my significant other bought me a keyboard. I’ve tinkered around with it a little over the twenty years or so that I’ve had it and I even took a quick-learn class, which only left me more frustrated than before. So, the keyboard sat in the basement of my old house all those years. I’ve done much purging over the past few years and even moved to a new home, purging even more, yet I refused to give up the keyboard, telling myself that one day, I will play again!
When I moved into this home a little less than two years ago, I decided to set the keyboard up in my office. I tinkered with it a few times and after retirement was knee deep into scrapbooking. So once again, out went the keyboard into a closet as I changed part of my office into a craft area. For a couple of weeks I had it in the closet, but decided if I was ever going to play it again, it needed to be front and center in my face every day and so it is now set up in my family room, a room a spend a lot of time in when I’m relaxing.
So now you know. My second creative passion is music, specifically playing the piano and putting music to some of the lyrics I’ve already written.
What I learned through my writing is that some dreams never die and that everything happens in its own Divine timing. Because I never lost that dream of writing even though I hadn’t written a word in many, many years, I know I can achieve my life’s dreams, the only thing required is to begin.
Is there anything missing from your life that you’ve always dreamed of doing? What is stopping you? When are you going to begin?
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(She/Her)
The gal behind Held In The Heart. The Community Journal is a space for those who feel deeply to express freely. We explore all sorts of things here, from the real & raw healing stories & creative writing, to the funny & fleeting moments of everyday human life. I warmly welcome you and invite you to explore with us!