The elephant is out of the living room

Actually, it isn't an elephant, it's a piano, and it wasn't even in the living room, because I don't think the beams would have held. 

But my childhood piano, the Hardman baby grand, has now embarked on its trek to its new home with Pete's family in RI.

When I was six, I started piano lessons, and, having no piano, practiced at the neighbor's. I do not recall the event of the upright piano arriving in our house, but I do remember that it lived in the dining room. Being a smallish dining room, the piano was nearly smack up against the corner of the room, leaving just enough space for a small child (me) to hide from our babysitter. THAT was a whole other story, involving police and never seeing the babysitter again...I think everyone was pretty upset. But I was only hiding, not running away.

Sometime after that, our friends the Harrisons were replacing their baby grand, and sold my parents the Hardman aforementioned for some small amount of money. Of course, we had to move it, and I do not remember that, either. But it took up residence in our living room, there being not enough room in the dining room for it along with a dining table. And there it stayed, until about 1973 or so, when Dad and V shipped it to me in Massachusetts. THAT was a big event, and I had a tuner come in and recondition it...at least to the extent that one can recondition a piano in situ. She said it was nearly concert quality, despite the cracked soundboard.

I don't remember how we moved it to our new house in 1976, but we did...I seem to CONVENIENTLY forget the heavy lifting, as befits the princess that I must appear to my public... LOL. And then, sometime in the late 1990s, we moved it to Portland. Well, we had its insides reconditioned (the technician removed them and took them to his studio in the back seat of his pickup truck) and new plastic keycaps to replace the split and missing ivories. And when we built the addition in the back of the house (with the only actually LEVEL floors in the whole place), we had movers move it from the front room to the back room.

So imagine my surprise when, upon my gifting it to our grandniece and nephews, their Dad and his brother came to move it in a U-Haul truck. They had carefully and thoroughly researched the project, and deliberately and painstakingly wrapped it, shrinkwrapped it, bound it to a piano dolly, and hauled it right out the back door on the truck ramp, which luckily fit right in through the back door!

I guess this post is in memory of my many happy hours at the keyboard. The sightreading exercises stood me in good stead for my amateur singing and my typing...my eye-hand coordination is super. I am sad to see it go out of my life, but happy for its sake...as it moves through its 9th decade on earth as a Hardman baby grand, it is going to a young woman who will play it every day, joyfully. I also hope that she will play duets on it with her brother. What fun.

I will content myself to again practicing at the neighbors' house...K has invited me to use her instrument, and I have started to imagine scheduling myself to do so. I will assuage the guilt I felt when I came across my old practice schedule (hardly filled in at all), and I am looking forward to it.