Hello my musical one,

Wow do I have news! When I was four years old, my parents bought me a piano which I fell in love with but never actually played (and later the piano was sold before I ever took lessons). My whole life, I’ve had this obsession with pianos… really, if you see how my heart skips when I see a piano, you might even feel inclined to laugh.

Any time I saw a piano at someone’s house or at a hospital or in a business, I’d go sit at the bench and pretend I could play, and sometimes I’d actually sound pretty good - though not really all that memorable. Throughout my life, I always owned a keyboard. My mom bought me a few of them and most of the time they were these keyboards that light up when you play them so a person could learn how to figure out the notes easier. Each time I got a new keyboard, the newer one would feature more sound effects, songs, and bonus stuff. As an adult, I bought my very own synthesizer keyboard (which costed at the time about $3,000) but STILL didn’t know how to play. I still have it.

And since November of last year (I started taking lessons around the time you were conceived, before I found out I was pregnant)… I began taking my first official piano lessons with a  musical jazz pianist who is helping me learn to play by ear. Every week, he teaches me a little bit more and a little bit more. He’ll ask me to practice when I get home, but since I don’t really have a piano (a synthesizer is definitely not a piano), it’s been very difficult for me to get connected to the music and practice at home.

A week ago, your father suggested we go buy a real piano. When he first said this, I have to admit, I got so excited, I nearly peed on myself and started hugging and kissing him like there was no tomorrow. Totally life-changing moment, trust me. We went to look at pianos and the ones that were beautiful and in-tune were thousands of dollars, which we simply can’t afford. The cheap ones were embarrassing to look at and since they were out of tune, sounded more like… well… like space donkeys echoing off the Grand Canyon. Definitely not pretty-sounding, but at least entertaining in the sense they sounded so bad-it-sounds-good they’d be a great conversation-piece around the house.

So anyway, today we went to Vance Music Center and bought a Gulbransen piano. It was the lowest-priced piano they had ($500), not in-tune, and the keys don’t match. It ain’t pretty, my dear. But like any car that needs a paint job and fine tuning, it’s got potential. No worries. I have every intention of sanding it, re-staining it a rich color, get matching white key covers, get it tuned, and make it look better than new in no time. The piano is supposed to be delivered Monday evening (four days from now), so I’m super excited to get it! It feels, in some sense, I’ve waited for this moment for 24 years! I have the same excited connection to seeing, having, playing a piano that I had when I was 4, and… because I’m hormonally emotionally right now, will probably burst into tears when it gets here.

Your ears are almost completely formed right now. You’re almost 4 months old and pretty soon you’ll be able to hear the beautiful sound of my heart playing the keys. The way I play piano is the way most people say, “I love you.” It’s one of those things I can’t explain. It’s as though the piano is connected with my spirit and seems to communicate everything I’ve wanted to say.

I love you, little one. I am more excited than words can say and it is my life goal that one of these days, we can play together. One of my all-time favorite instrumental songs is “Chariots of Fire” which my dad introduced me to when I was very young (maybe 6 or 7 years old, probably earlier) and since then, I’ve had a deep association with the passionate notes that a piano can produce. Maybe one day when you’re older, you’ll back on this and know one of my little secrets. If you ever learn how to play “Chariots of Fire” on piano the way I remember it, I’ll personally see to it that you have a car on your sixteenth birthday.

Love
Mommy