In some ways, my inability to part with the various musical instruments (and the music) I attempted to learn over the years is emblematic of my overall downsizing roadblocks. And perhaps yours, too.
My father, who was an aficionado of classical music, was probably thrilled when I first expressed an interest in playing the piano at age seven. My parents wasted little time in buying a handsome upright piano that matched our Scandinavian modern furniture and arranging for me to have lessons with a nun at the local Catholic school I attended. Up until that time, my only musical instrument had been a tiny replica of a baby grand.
I took lessons for two years. I loved that Nun, I practiced hard, though I can’t say I enjoyed the repetition it entailed. In the summer, I found more pleasure in learning new songs from a favorite book of traditional melodies. I did manage a reasonable rendition of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” from the Nutcracker Suite for my final recital. At my summer day camp at age nine, I tried my hand at the flute as an alternative.
After we moved to another city, I had a break from piano for a year until resuming with a new teacher, a dreadful woman who yelled at me and left her dirty Kleenexes on the piano. I cried a lot and quit piano. In my high school years, I returned to it to learn popular favorites, like “Moon River” and “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” Although I no longer have the piano, an instrument you can’t even give away these days, I have plenty of the decaying music books and sheet music I used while learning to play (not to mention a large pastel my mother made of me playing the piano). Some of these I have consigned to my collage paper pile, but it pains me to throw the rest out.
The roadblock: Sure, I have photos. But how can I part with something representing such a huge commitment of time and such importance to my father?
In later elementary school, I also learned to play the recorder and a small xylophone. At home, I wrote a short musical with a Hawaiian theme. I also sang in the chorus, and my school was scheduled to join with other Philadelphia students for a major concert in a big venue. Alas, I got a cold and couldn’t participate.
Success: Fortunately, I was able to scan the only remnants I had of these efforts.
In high school, I was inspired by the burgeoning folk music movement and watched a program on TV called “Hootenany.” By the time I entered college, I was eager to learn guitar to accompany myself on all these new songs. For my birthday freshman year, I picked out a three-quarter sized instrument, perfect for my small hands and took lessons via a public television program. But I didn’t have the nerve to bring the instrument to any of our frequent singalongs. I fooled around on the guitar until a few years after college, never achieving any proficiency. More recently, I tried to give away the guitar, but like a boomerang, it came back to me when the teenage girl for whom it was intended, didn’t take to it. And then I looked it up and realized it might be worth something.
The roadblock: Being lured by its potential value and then having to deal with finding a buyer.
In my early 30s, as a fan of the blues, I took classes in harmonica and was even the only woman once we got beyond the basic class. I never could bend a note successfully. But with their small size, I always thought they’d be a perfect accompaniment on my travels. I still have fantasies about playing harmonica again, and they take up no room.
The roadblocks: Kidding myself I will actually follow through on this fantasy and dismissing the amount of space these objects require. (Little things add up after all.)
Upon leaving a long-held job in my 40s, I asked for a banjo, imagining myself sitting on my new rocker and strumming a bluegrass tune. I took one set of classes in old-time banjo, always meaning to find myself a bluegrass teacher, but I never did.
The roadblock: The banjo has become a symbol of the job I loved the most and was a gift for those years. I have imbued it with meaning beyond its function.
Among my parents’ archives was a violin, perhaps used as a fiddle. Was it my Irish grandfather’s, handed down to his oldest son, my father, upon his death? I asked a friend who’d been studying how to make stringed instruments to see what he could do to it to make it usable, once again fantasizing myself making beautiful music. I didn’t get as far as learning a single note, and I don’t even have it on display.
The roadblock: For a long while I’ve hung onto this instrument through sentimentality—it might have belonged to my grandfather!
Success: But I’m happy to say that I am bequeathing it to a first cousin once-removed (the great grandson of the man I believe owned the violin), who plays other instruments. He already knows about it, and I promise he will receive it long before I am gone.
I suspect my days as a musical dilletante are over. My talent was mediocre at best, and I just didn’t have the staying power to gain the needed skills. But the instruments (and the music) took on meanings that have made it difficult for me to part with them easily. Maybe my failure in this aspect of my life makes it harder to let go. By hanging on, am I retaining some hope that I can still achieve success in music?