One thing I’ve always wanted to do, but never succeeded at, is to learn how to play music. I’ve made various attempts over the years. Ill-fated piano lessons as a kid. Buying a penny whistle and a song book at a Woods Tea Company concert, wherein I learned one song before they stopped putting the fingerings above the notes and my mental block on reading sheet music prevented me from learning more.
It would seem the universe is telling me that creating music just isn’t in the stars for me, yet every so often the bug strikes once again and I pick up the pennywhistle or sit down to a keyboard and try again. A while back I was even courting the notion of ordering a ukulele off amazon, having been told that the instrument was ridiculously easy to learn, but ultimately decided against it realizing that I would still have to know how to read the sheet music.
Sheet music has always been a strange topic in my family. My dad and my maternal grandmother were both musicians. He played by ear, she had to have the sheet music in front of her no matter how many times she might have played a piece over the years. And they were forever arguing which was the better way of playing, but not quite in the way you’d think. My dad always wished he could read sheet music to play more accurately, while my grandma didn’t like being tied to the sheet music and always wished she could just play by ear like my dad did. Both had a gift the other envied, both convinced that their own way of making music was the less desirable one.
I’ve been thinking about my grandma a lot recently as it was just over a year ago that she passed away. She would have been 101 years old this November. One her life’s great passions was music, and she played right up until she was too weak to play anymore. Roanoke, Illinois was blessed with her marvelous skills on the piano and organ for a better part of a century, and it was a gift she tried to pass on to her children and grandchildren with varying degrees of success. I think a couple of my cousins still play the piano on occasion but outside of that I don’t think the music bug has really bitten any of us too hard.
Still, as I think about my grandma I realize that a part of her gift was passed on in me. The part that pushed her to pursue her music with such love for the process. The same drive that pushes me to pursue writing and other endeavors in the same way. For that I will always be grateful
She would be proud. She loved to write too.