My Piano Is Home!

My piano arrived today! My mom arranged to have it brought from my sister's house, to my apartment. Mom works for a Mennonite second hand store, and was able to get it all set up with them. There were four men. My sister phoned me to say they had left her place with the piano in the truck, and within minutes, they were at my door.

I stood out on my patio to watch the beautiful piano being unloaded. She's very old - probably near 100 years. A beautiful upright grand with wonderful carving on the legs, and carved scrollwork on two of the front panels and along the top rim. She's a gorgeous lady who has travelled in a circle, across the ocean and back to get here - my mother had the piano at her home when she was young and living in the town right beside the one where I live now, and then it came to my childhood home in Vancouver where my sisters and I all learned to play at a young age. I was five when I first began to take lessons. My sisters and I used to play Christmas songs all together, all of us seated in a row on the bench. I played most often, and so the piano was promised to me one day. When I was thirty, and my dark days on the streets came to an end, I began a new life on Texada Island. I travelled by ferry to the mainland where my parents lived, and the piano was moved out of their livingroom, onto my brother-in-law's truck to be brought across the ocean to my home. Eight years later, I moved from Texada Island to Vancouver Island, and of course, the piano came with me. Then I left x and moved into a small apartment where I couldn't keep the piano, so it was left behind at the house with him for that year. I missed my piano terribly. Last september when I moved from the Island to this city on the mainland where my family live, the piano was taken from the house I'd shared with x, and brought back across the ocean with me, to my sister's house. Now I've moved into this larger apartment, and am amazed to have my piano again! She's come full circle, just one town away from where she first began, and about a two hour drive from my childhood home where I first met her. She looks just wonderful in my livingroom.

I stepped out onto the patio to watch the movers struggling to bring the piano out of the truck. The back doors were open, the truck's interior too dark for me to see. Then she appeared in the opening and the sun shone down on her, bringing out the lovely shades in her wood. She was like a huge, graceful ship, or a proud elephant who lives a life of quiet tolerance for those lesser creatures around her. I had tears in my eyes as my piano was ponderously eased down the ramp, metal wheels squealing. Such a grand, exquisite instrument, she endured the indignity of the movers grunting and straining, shouting to each other as they heaved and pushed and strained to keep her in place. She is so huge and heavy, yet she never loses her femininity. No matter that it takes several men to move her, and dolly's and plywood sheets and ramps, she is a lady.