Our living room always had a piano in it.  Until I was about six, it was the old classic upright. About 1950 or 1951, our Dad bought a new studio piano for us.  That piano got moved hither and yon across the country after Dad left us in March of 1962.  Mom had it shipped to me in California around 1980.  Its final move was from California to Minnesota in 1993.

It was passed along, with gratitude, to a young family in our community in September of 2010.  I had no family members who would make use of it and they had a 6 year old daughter who began lessons last fall and will make very good use of it, as will the three siblings coming along behind her.   At the Christmas Eve Service,  2010, the 6 year old sang two verses of “Away In The Manager” and accompanied herself by playing the melody line.

Backstory to the Piano’s New Home

I was acquainted with this little girl’s great-grandparents 50 years ago. During the summer of 1961, I worked as a nurse’s aide at a nursing home in Williston, North Dakota.  This little girl’s great-grandfather was the pastor at the church I attended there…when I was 17 and her grandmother was about nine.  During that summer, those great-grandparents left for mission work in Japan and that is where her grandmother grew up.  Their granddaughter was in high school when I met her in Minnesota in the 1990’s.  As we were getting acquainted at that time, the dots sort of connected themselves until I realized with amazement who I was talking with:  “You mean to tell me that your grandparents are….!?!?!”

And of course, that’s exactly what she meant to tell me.   So the piano has gone to this granddaughter’s home here in Minnesota farm country….talk about things going full circle.

I always knew that the day I released the piano into someone else’s care would involve tears.  I couldn’t have imagined how much joy it would also involve, as I recognized the serendipity of the blessing of God in allowing me to give that lovely instrument to the descendants of folks who were such a blessing to me when I was in high school.