Memory Monday: The piano and me: Part 2--Miss Tennie

Miss Tennie, my music teacher, lived in an old two-story house with a friend of hers, whose name escapes me now, but I'll conjure it up eventually, be a good blogger and properly edit this post. Or at least add a PS. Miss Tennie taught piano and Miss Mary (remembered it--yeah!) worked elsewhere but also kept the books for the enterprise. The house was white wood with tall ceilings and Victorian furniture. It didn't smell closed-up, so much as unused on a daily basis. The bedrooms were upstairs, the kitchen and music room down, plus a garden room where we always waited for our lessons. In good weather, you could go outside and sit in the double swing and admire the garden. Otherwise, it was homework and old comic books. Smart students studied their theory and fingering, which may be why I remember more about the garden and the comics.

During the year, we had smaller recitals with Miss Tennie carefully scheduling when you should come, parents in tow. The music room opened up into what would have been a living room and folding chairs were assembled there. Twenty parents and I think it would have been full, so there was a constant in-and-out. Plus, she didn't want everyone in the garden room waiting their turn either. You had to be silent in the garden room.

For these smaller recitals, you would walk out in front of everyone's parents and yours, announce your name and the name of the piece, sit down, gather your wits because ohmygod! you had had to memorize this, place your hands just-so on the keyboard of the grand, and play. At the end, a perfect-10 or why-are-they-wasting-their-money-on-lessons, you curtseyed or bowed, gender specific. All this in preparation for the end-of-school church recital.

This took place over two nights in Miss Tennie's church which sported a fine grand. The first night started with the youngest pupils and moved onward. Somewhere in the high-elementary grades, the first night would end. Accomplishment 1: being last on the first night program. Accomplishment 2: being last, and by default the best pupil she had, on the second.

Somewhere in the middle of my years, she was in a car accident and her right (I think) hand was broken. While it did repair to a certain extent, she was never able to reach an octave again. This pained her emotionally (and maybe physically although she never said) and thank goodness, I was old enough to be aware of it.

Miss Tennie fell ill my junior year in high school and that was the end of my lessons. To my shame, I was glad. I was ready to move on to what I considered bigger and better activities. But I'll never forget her, the thin white hair in a bun, the orthopedic-looking shoes, the hands, though crippled, which could make a piano sing... Thank you, Miss Tennie. If memories are what life's about, I have you to thank for many of them.

Memory Monday: The piano and me: An Introduction

I think we'll spend a few Mondays with the piano.

Since I was six years old, I've only spent 4 years without a piano within immediate range. Even in college, I could find a piano. In my last year, the dorm lobby featured a grand. I was never its equal but plenty were and it was a joy to hear it sing. The 4 years without were my spouse's grad school years. Away from home, in a small apartment, there wouldn't have been room for a piano had we had one. A move, a larger apartment, a for-sale upright sitting in the breezeway... but I get ahead of myself.

Where to start? My mother must have wanted my sister and me to learn to play, an opportunity she would most assuredly not had. But in order to take lessons, one must practice at home, and so a piano had to be found. I can remember going into the country to the home of an older cousin of my mother's and getting the upright piano that was our first. I think Mother paid $25 for it, at least that's the number which stands out. It was brought home, sequestered in the... omigosh! I don't remember where it was put. I remember its replacement, a spinet, much better, and can still see it sitting in the living room, but the upright? The starter piano? I don't remember where it went.

I don't even remember my first lesson. I was in second grade, I think, and would have been nervous. Miss Tennessee Strickland, Miss Tennie we called her, was my teacher for the 10 years I took lessons. I can pull out my old music and still smile at her handwriting on my pages. I don't think I always smiled at it. Let's face it: music lessons, if you are only mildly talented, a technician on your best days, music lessons are a love-hate relationship.

Am I glad I play? Oh certainly. I still have that breezeway upright in my den, lovingly tended and freshly tuned. A house seems empty without a piano. Can't imagine it. But practice? Oh....

But it must have had a long-term effect on me. I write about musicians, seven of my heroes and one of my heroines are talented people who ooze rhythm, whose fingertips drip talent. Just not mine. My fingertips are meant to drip words.