The Piano Man

Wednesday night I arrived home on my weekly visit with my mom. To those of you who don't know about her, her recent memory is slipping away, and so I am helping her to get her house in order so that it will take less stress off of her worrying about what she doesn't remember. My mother has always been a stickler for her affairs, and it is wonderful to see the relief she is experiencing, although at times hectic. Wednesday might as I was getting my things arranged my mother was playing on the piano - now mom is an accomplished pianist to say the least. She played for eons in the church and was congratulated by all who heard her .... however, I noticed that she was missing notes here and there, not many but a few. This was completely out of character for her, so when I got settled I went into the piano room and spoke with her about how surprised I was at the missed notes. 'Son' she said, 'I can't read the notes like I used to, and I don't practice like I used to ... right then something in my mind clicked. Ever had one of those moments. As we continued talking about music, a definite love of hers, as she talked about the accordian, harp she had played and the guitar she had started to learn until my father grew annoyed with the practice and sold it one day when she was at work .. dad could be like that. Matter of fact my mother had just gotten to the place where she could play the harp and my sister would accompany her on the piano, came home one day and she and sister went to the basement to play and dad had also sold the harp! Back to that 'click' - I have wanted for more years than I can remember to again start playing the piano, I barely remember the elementary moves and so I asked mom for a couple of beginners books so I could practice...she couldn't believe I wanted to start playing again, but I do. So I took a couple books home, and to my good wifes amazement I set down at our piano and began to practice. Bragging time: I can now play [with both hands] an really easy Negro spiritual. The title of it is
'One More River', I practiced it until I can almost do it my memory, here are the words: 'Noah once he built an ark, there's one more river to cross. He patched it up with hickory bark, there's one more river to cross. There's one more river, and that river is Jordan, there's just one more river, there's one more river to cross.'
I am truly enjoying this part of a new journey in my latter phase of life, and hopefully one day, Lord willing, I can sit down and play from the hymnal and chorus books ............ and maybe even do a duet with the good wife. In telling all of this to grandma[97yrs old.] she told me of how a couple of mom's brothers played duets and even a couple of recitals until the call from the neighbor boys to come and play won the day ... now, she said both sons have told her they wish she would have not allowed them to stop, but there's only so much frustration a parent can handle, she said, and I was getting tired competing with their friends!!
Then about 3:30AM this morning I couldn't sleep, so I woke up and read a chapter from a book I'll talk about in another post, [Practicing Our Faith; chapter on Testimony] and the author talked about how the African American slaves would sing their miseries and hopes and faith in songs ... it was a great chapter as he related their sings to the songs of Miriam, after the Israelites had been delivered from Pharaohs army ... and it added a specialness to the spiritual I am learning to play.