LAUREL COUNTY, Ky. — The soft hammering of a single piano echoed through the pews and elevated ceilings of my old Catholic church.  The ivory keys I pressed down upon were deliberate and the black, a necessary evil.  I learned to appreciate the beauty of music at a young age.

My piano teacher was a family friend, and she was helpful but I was ready to learn more quickly.  While playing simple tunes like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and a funny song called, “The Broken Robot,” I wanted to learn something more exciting and complex.  So, I secretly would jump to the last page of the practice book before lessons began for a challenge.

I mastered Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” within the second week of playing.  I was so surprised that I grasped the music so easily that I started to feel as if I just made the whole song up and I was playing it all wrong.  Months into effortless practice, I reached the last page of the book — there I sat, face to face with that bleak ordinary ditty, “Ode to Joy.”

I was playing it perfectly all along, so perfect I was perfectly bored with it.  If I was going to play an ode to joy it would have sounded more like Vivaldi’s “Spring.”  Nonetheless, that was the last song I ever learned on the piano because my teacher quit for childbirth.  

Music had grown into such a passion of mine that I wanted more.  I joined band in middle school wanting to play the violin, only to find out they didn’t have violins and we couldn’t afford one.  So I played the trumpet and french horn instead.  There I sat, the only female in my section of brass instruments, heralding along all the way up to my junior year in high school.

Apparently, being in band wasn’t cool for a budding teenager entering adulthood and I had better things to do.  I was one of the best trumpet players in the band and I still wanted more.  Unfortunately, I never was blessed the opportunity to learn another instrument, other than my awful attempts at a guitar — calluses are just not very feminine.

Today, I keep my trumpet and a guitar around just to pluck and play around with to make sure I still have at least a few musical bones in my body.  Whenever I’m visiting someone who has a piano, of course I sneak a few random notes or lazily hammer “Ode to Joy.”  But I aspire to continue learning the piano if ever offered the opportunity or take a stab at a violin.  

Music is beauty, and I do my share of appreciation every chance I get.  I also would hope that parents encourage their children, just as my parents did, to find something that is not only challenging but inspiring.  Never give up on something that gives back to the soul even if someone else’s childbirth gets in the way.



mmccrarey@sentinel-echo.com