Listen For Your Song

There's a black Wurlitzer piano in my father's sunroom and I am jealous, wondering why and for whom it sits ... I'd like to think it could be for me. But yes, I know it's not.

There's something about a piano that draws you to it. Your fingers anticipating the sound of a key press, the way the notes linger in the air. I couldn't help myself and dragged a chair out, my hands instantly recognizing the stretch of an octave from thumb to pinky.

It was like breathing. That first note followed by a second, as I remembered one of the short songs I wrote back in the days of high school music theory class. I wasn't as talented as the rest of the kids in my class. Not like James who could play Mozart without a single page of sheet music. Or a girl like Sarah who could play almost any instrument you dropped into her outstretched hands. But what I lacked for in natural talent, I made up for in feeling, despite the constant jeers I got from my companions.

James liked to think himself King of the Piano. No one could play better than him, no one could play more than him, and my feeble attempts at piano playing often set him on edge. It was almost like hearing his teeth grinding, everytime he realized I beat him to the favored practice room during lunch. But practice I did, over and over again, finding the notes that worked, changing the ones that didn't, until my song took shape.

It was a song that echoed with vulnerabilty and yet the bass line carried a show of strength, an iron will. It sang of being unsure of who I was, and what I could be, all the while carrying the confidence of a spirit that could always mend no matter how many times she was broken.

And even though it might not have been the best, I've always been proud to call it mine.