Mother's Day Gifts from Mom

I need to tell you about my mama.

She grew up in Murray, Utah. Her mother was pioneer stock - my 3rd great grandfather is atop the This is the Place Monument. Her father was born here after his mother and her parents immigrated from Sweden. Grandpa worked at the Murray smelter until it closed, and then at a paint store. Grandma kept a clean and tidy house, stating often that "soap was cheap."

Mom loved music, and loved it when the family had the radio on in the evenings. It used to sadden her that her dad was able to turn the radio off in the middle of any piece of music when it was time for bed - slightly scandalized that he could interrupt such a heavenly flow of sound.

There was no money for a piano, but she made one out of a cardboard box, fighting to cut through the cardboard on the "keys" she had drawn for a keyboard so the cardboard would somewhat reluctantly move up and down to her touch.

The first thing Mom bought as an adult with a job was a piano. She made modest payments she could afford until it was all hers. That's the piano I first learned to play on.

When my mother started to hear me trying to plunk out any melody I could hear - from Primary songs to movie themes - she started to get out the elementary reading books she had used to try to learn to play. I was temporarily overjoyed to start piano lessons, because as abby-normal as I was in soooo many things as a kid - in that thing - I was terribly normal. I loved to play the piano, but practice? You're kidding, right?

This is actually the core of the book I'm striving to finish - the metaphor of personal practice in our lives and the individual tutoring we receive from God, but I merely digress with that brief interruption for a moment of shameless self-promotion.

My mother was so sly about enticing me with new piano books. After movies like The Music Man, My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins, and The Sound of Music, little simplified piano books from the movies would just appear on the piano.

Clever bird.

Rather than insist I help with dinner dishes, Mom more often than not called out requests for various pieces while she did the dishes. Not that I never had those chores, but she often asked me to play specific songs while she worked, and I was only too happy to "get out of work."

Clever bird.

If you'd told my kid Self that I would make a 40+ year career out of teaching piano, there's an excellent chance I would have rebelled on the spot and never touched the piano again.

I'm pretty sure this thought makes Heavenly Father smile quite big.

My mother's tenacity at keeping me at piano study is a testament to her great love of music - and her ardent desire to give me something she so desperately wanted for herself. And my dad was her willing accomplice. A typical piano dropout who chose sports over music, he was the cliche of an adult who rued that he couldn't see the value of what his mother - a gifted pianist herself - was trying to give him.

Well. I didn't see the value of what they were trying to give me, either. But tonight, as I got ready to come upstairs and go to bed, I realized I hadn't played the piano for several days. It suddenly felt a little urgent to play for a few minutes, because most of the times I've played the piano in the last 2 years, that's when I feel my parents come around the very most.

I played several of my favorite pieces that still sound semi-respectable without practice: Mendelssohn's Venetian Gondola Song; Bach's Siciliano, Debussy's Reverie and Clair de Lune, and Ashokan Farewell.

It felt like they'd come to listen, as they so often do. Gratitude rushed in like a tidal wave again, as I remembered - again - how I wouldn't have this beauty in my life - respite from chaos - were it not for two beautiful souls who gave me a gift almost against my very will.

Thank you both - Mom and Dad - but thank you, especially, Mom - who had to put up with my attitude the most. When I think of the 40-year back pain you endured the last half of your life, I fear it was me that broke your spine of steel.

I made deals with both my parents near the end of their lives that in the Millennium, I'll teach them to play the piano.

Dad and I promised after several weeks of loving to learn to play right hands, only to discover he had a weakness in his left hand that wouldn't allow him to play hands together. Mom and I promised after she had become blind from macular degeneration - seeing only "men as trees walking" at that point in her life. What a lovely thing that will be - to give them the joy of creating music.

The three greatest gifts my parents gave me:

1. Jesus

2. Words - given to me in stories and books

3. Music - the language we use when we pray without words

I'm glad I remembered just in the nick of time to give Mama her Mother's Day present this year. It's because of her I had it to give.