Playing It Safe

I took piano lessons when I was a kid. My mother started me in the first grade but I had no interest in practicing. I was granted a reprieve and started lessons again in the fourth grade. My teachers were whatever nun was the current music teacher at the small Catholic school in town. I didn’t have any bad experiences with those nuns, they were just dull. Except one. When I was in the eighth grade my piano teacher was an elderly, round, and very short nun named Sister Anastasia. She must have grown up in a somewhat privileged family near a large city because she told me her father had taken her as a child to hear a concert by Rachmanioff or Stravinsky or Shostakovich, I can’t remember which but I was impressed. During one lesson, when I was learning to play the Minuet in G, that annoying song everybody learns, Sister Anastasia taught me to dance the minuet. There was a classical piece in one of my mother’s old piano books, which I was using at the time. She sat down, started to play it for me and suddenly jumped up to exclaim, “My stars, it’s ‘Hearts and Flowers’!” What a delightful person she was. There were of course recitals, which I dreaded with every fiber of my being. I was an exceptionally shy child and to get up on a stage in the small auditorium of the Catholic school was way beyond my comfort zone. I don’t remember if I played my piece well or not. Probably not. My memory of that night is the performance of a girl who was two or three grades ahead of me. She sat down to play and when she totally flubbed her piece, she laughed right out loud. That happened twice until she eventually made it through the song. I couldn’t believe it. To be able to laugh at her mistakes and more than that, to do it in front of a crowd was unthinkable in my world. She’s still one of my role models.

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