Goodbye, old friend

Last Wednesday was the end of an era. We said farewell to the piano that we have had for about 34 or 35 years. I don’t really play the piano, just pick out tunes and try out ideas for songs and arrangements once in a while. Back in the day, though, our old friend was a real workhorse. Everyone practiced their piano lessons on this piano. It displayed a multitude of Christmas decorations, gingerbread houses and family pictures and provided a place to hide from brothers or sisters or parents. occasionally it was the final resting place of toys and trinkets that were small enough to fit through a small gap below the keyboard.

It’s really showing its age, what with all the scratches, hammer marks (inflicted by a brand new hammer on Christmas day many, many years ago), pencil and crayon marks, scuffs and the scars of wood carving experiments. The piano bench doesn’t match because the original bench wore out ages ago and one of the keys makes a funny noise; I suspect a stray penny is the culprit.

Still, despite its age and cosmetic challenges, it is a fine piano that should be played more often. It didn’t make much sense to keep it around when it almost never gets used by me. I had told all the kids a few years ago that the first person that had room for it could take it to their house. M&T recently bought a piano of their own, and LL found a free piano locally.

Luckily for our piano, Jenn plays the piano and doesn’t care what it looks like if she can have a piano in the house now. So our old friend is going to stay with them for a while. Some day, if it’s reasonable and Jenn has found a better, nicer piano, the old piano will go and visit E if she wants it. In any case, it will stay in the family for as long as we have people to pass it along to.

So now, my living room has a big empty space. I won’t be looking for anything to replace it until after we pay for our trip in April/May. We’ll rearrange the stuff that is there and figure out what to do later.

Any suggestions?