Moving the Piano

Sometime in March, I was driving home from my piano lesson and I don't know what came over me, but an idea just popped into my head. The way they do. It seemed so right, I just had to go straight to my mother's house and tell her.  

I think we inherited my mother's piano in 2002 when her house was being renovated. Alissa was a piano student who practiced regularly, so we traded the Groisser spinet for my mother's baby grand. It felt special to have this heirloom in our house. We stuck it into the corner of the living room and over the years it got a lot of use while the top of it got buried in papers. Underneath the piano we stored a collection of things that didn't have a better spot. When Alissa left for college in 2007, I started to take lessons so it wouldn't be a big piece of furniture that never got used.

Then last fall, my mother's husband had an idea -- he asked Mom if she might want to take piano lessons. She hadn't had a lesson in 66 years. She said that could be interesting. I asked my piano teacher if she would take on an unusual student -- 89 years old, an accomplished pianist, memory loss happening, an excellent sight reader. Claudia was intrigued and said yes. So my mom has been taking lessons for months now, and practicing for hours at a time.

One day I heard her practicing on the spinet and I thought, that is a terrible piano. I can't believe she plays that for hours at a time. And that's why this idea popped up suddenly as I was cruising down Lawyers Road. I said, "Mom, do you want your piano back?" And without missing a beat, she said, "Yes." 

It took maybe a month to let her husband get used to the idea of a baby grand invading their space, and for me to assemble the right crew to move the piano. I enlisted my brother because he understands the importance of this particular piano and he isn't afraid of a big task. He lives in Denver, so we had to wait until he was here.

We set the time for 7 AM on Saturday morning, the morning of our big anniversary party. That's when there were plenty of bodies around, and it's the only time we had unscheduled that weekend. It was a little bit rainy, but I brought the Sprinter van to the front steps, with a slightly muddy dolly from the stand (it had been used an hour ago, in the rain, to load market trucks). A sleepy but willing group of guests assembled -- Tillie's boyfriend, Alissa's boyfriend, nephew Hugh, brother Charles, Benjamin.  

I had cleared the piano and a path to the front door. Our house was in chaos, as a result, with crates of junk stacked in the middle of the living room. Luckily we weren't having the party here and we could just leave everything in a big cluttered tower for the weekend. Our closest friends and family ignored the disaster zone and visited anyway, sitting on couches that are always kept clear -- sacred space.

The piano was really heavy. It is over a 100 years old (according to one piano tuner who told me it was not worth tuning anymore, it had run its course) and made of some heavy materials. They were very careful, every staggering step of the way.  The dolly was useful, leaving a muddy track in the hallway. Getting down the front steps was the most precarious, with people at the bottom trying to keep everything steady while people at the top tried not to drop it. Once they got it into the truck, I knew the project was a success.

Charles drove very slowly, with four people in the back, protecting the piano from falling or banging around. He backed up to my mom's front stoop and they skillfully unloaded it, like pros.  My mother's husband was a little taken aback by the punctuality of the project. It was still pretty early. Then it took about 4 tries of spinning the piano around until they found the correct orientation, at the far end of the living room. Perfect.

Then my mother sat down to play. Tears came to some of our eyes. It sounded so amazing. This is the piano that my parents bought when they were first married. It may not be the best piano anymore, but it is my mother's piano and it is back at home. 

I learned later from Nell that our piano teacher was uncomfortable with this whole plan. Why didn't we get piano movers? What were we thinking? It absolutely never occurred to me, not for a second. This is a do-it-yourself family and we have a lot of capacity. It just takes planning and execution, but we can do pretty much anything that we decide to do.

It took about a week to get our house back in order and we have so much more space. I now practice on a keyboard in the guest room, but this means I am not interrupting all the activities and naps that happen in this beehive (as my friend Laura describes our house). It's a win/win/win.