This summer my daughter Sophie came to visit me from Montreal. She sat down at the piano in my Long Beach living room. She started leafing through a stack of old practice books that were gathering dust. Soft at the corners. Inside: gold stars and animal stickers applied by a teacher years ago, for a song mastered.
She didn’t say anything. She just smiled.
I smiled too. Because that piano has followed our family for a long time.
It started in Moorestown, New Jersey, in 1972. My parents had moved our family of five out of a Center City row house to the suburbs. The first new furnishing my mom bought was a baby grand. Not a new couch. Or a dining room table. A piano.
Fifty-four years later, at a celebration of life gathering in honor of my father, a neighbor, Pat Finio, told a story I’d never heard. After the moving truck had left the cul-de-sac, she came by from up the street to welcome us. My mom invited her in, and Pat walked into a living room that was completely empty — except for that baby grand, sitting there like it owned the place.
Pat asked, “Who plays the piano?”
And my mother replied, “Nobody. Shall we learn together?”
While in middle school, I’d bring out my flute, and my mom and I would play duets. I’d carry the melody; she’d play underneath. We weren’t very good. But that wasn’t really the point.
Now, for the record: the piano in my living room today isn’t that same piano
After all the kids left home, my parents downsized and returned to Philadelphia. The baby grand didn’t make the trip to their new two-bedroom condo. My mom replaced it with a then state-of-the-art electric Yamaha Clavinova. Smaller. Sensible. Something that fit a city apartment.
That’s the one that’s been traveling with me..
My mom gave it to us when Sophie turned 7 or 8 years old and expressed an interest in music. We were living on Lower State Road in Doylestown. That’s where Sophie started lessons. Hence the books with the stickers. Inside the cover of a few is a note: “This book belongs to Sophie Cleff. Finished 2008,” signed by her teacher, Ms. Christine. The piano stayed put in the playroom for another decade.
Sophie, it turned out, had music in her in a way I never did. Piano, then guitar, trumpet, violin, clarinet, ukulele. Today she writes and sings her own songs at open mic nights in Montreal.
When I left Doylestown in 2018, the piano, one of the few pieces of furniture on my side of the balance sheet, came with me to a narrow row house in Lambertville — the first place of my own in thirty years. The piano went up to the third floor, into a sitting room I used as an office. I tried to teach myself to play with an iPad app. A little progress. Not much. There was a lot else to learn that year.
When I left Lambertville twelve months later, some things went into storage. A few things came with me into a new shared living situation. The piano didn’t quite fit, so it went to my sister Rebecca’s house in South Philly, down into their basement, because my teenage nephew had maybe, possibly, expressed an interest in learning to play.
That didn’t stick. In fact, it almost floated. Hurricane Ida came through town in 2021. Their basement flooded. The piano somehow survived two feet of water —iIt still carries the scars on its legs from its second stint in Philly.
Last year I moved to Long Beach, California. The piano came with me. All the way across the country.
For the first six months, I practiced. Really, I did. Twenty minutes or so, most days. Made a wee bit of progress. No gold stars, but a few kudos from that good ole app on my iPad. Then I lost steam. Tending my garden gave back faster.
So it’s been sitting there. Holding Sophie’s books. Waiting.
Here’s what I keep coming back to. It never really was about the piano. What my mom brought into that empty living room in the early 1970s wasn’t an instrument. It was an invitation.
I moved to Long Beach to be close to my other daughter, Isabel, who’s started a new family. My granddaughter, Riley, is now 5 months old. One of these days, while she’s toddling around my living room, I hope she asks, “Grandpa, who plays the piano?”
And I already know what I’m going to say.
“Nobody. Shall we learn together?”
