my heart is happy

i began taking lessons when i was 6 years old.

it was august and my mom would walk around the block with my little sisters while mrs. taylor taught me how to sit up straight, curl my fingers just right, and read those black dots on the paper.

a few years later and many many half hours of practice later [because that's how long i had to practice every day- 30 minutes] i ended up a little burnt out. i was tired of playing. i was tired of practicing. i was tired of the piano. and then that's when mrs. taylor quit teaching.

little did i know that she had slowly been dropping students, until she was down to just her last few favorite students, when she finally made the hard decision to stop teaching to concentrate on her husband's health.

i was both heartbroken and elated.

no more pressure to practice! no more pressure to improve. no more pressure from my parents that they were paying for these lessons and i needed to put more effort and time into them.

i took a break.

a whole summer off.

i barely touched my piano.

and after a while, i realized i needed it.

slowly i began to touch the keys again.

once again i found myself getting lost in the music i could make.

and i fell back in love.

that's when my parent's found me a new teacher.

a teacher who knew just how to push me and yet not break my love.

he knew what i wanted to play and bribed me into playing what i needed to play.

he taught me how to eat my brussel sprouts before my steak if you know what i mean :)

with mr. j i learned more technique- i already knew how to read music and match the black dots with the white keys, but he wouldn't let me get away with reading "most" of the notes off of the page and "improvising" the ones i didn't like. he shone his spotlight into my lazy corners and dug out all the cobwebs. he gave me a love for classical music and ragtime, not just playing things i was familiar with and things i wanted to play [like movie soundtrack music & broadway songs]. and he pushed me.

when i turned 16, i started taking college classes to supplement my high school work. i also started working. i loved my piano lessons, but i had to make a choice. i avoided it for a while and struggled to make it all work, but something had to be cut in order for my life to continue going. i dropped my lessons- but i didn't drop my love for playing.

from then on my playing became more sparse, but it was something i would always come back to.

when derrick & i got married, and moved into our house, i told him there was one thing i wanted: a piano. and a few weeks ago my dream finally came home. we had been on the lookout for a good piano for over a year and finally had the perfect one come into our lives.

i love looking at it and seeing it's chipped corners and scratched sides, it has character. people have played this piano before me and i'm sure it brought them as much joy as it brings me.

it makes my heart so happy to have a piano again.

[and not have to fight my sisters over an ounce of playing time!]

it's so wonderful to suddenly have it's beautiful music fill my house -

to listen to my husband sitting at it's keys composing his songs and singing his lungs out.

it's so relaxing to be able to sit down and let my fingers remember how they love those black and white keys.

i love having a piano again.