Making Room

    This Friday Anthony and my brother-in-law  Trent, are taking a road trip to Orange Grove to bring home a long awaited piece of my childhood, my Nana's piano.  Nana left us almost a year ago, a bittersweet goodbye for us but a beautiful homecoming for her.  Such a beautiful lady, I will have to devote a whole post for just her one day, but today's post is all about this very special item that resided in her house for many years.  My Nana bought this piano for my mom when my mom was in the third grade, Mom wanted to learn to play but the local piano teacher told her her fingers were too short and she would never be able to perfect it. 

     Well, that's when Nana found a teacher all the way in Corpus Christi that would take her daughter in for lessons.  That's a big deal considering the drive was thirty minutes there and back but Nana knew my mom really wanted to play the piano so like any determined mother would, she made it happen.  To make sure mom got the practice in that she needed Nana found a piano that was being sold in San Antonio, she purchased it  and excitedly waited for it's delivery.  She told me that it was all black when she first got it so she stripped it and under the coat of paint she found a beautiful wood grain. Fast forward a few years and Mom became the pianist for First Baptist Church Orange Grove, Tx at the age of fifteen she even met my dad while stopping by the same  grocery store after every piano lesson where he packed up their groceries and probably walked my mom to her car. 

      Many visits to my Nana's house consisted of all of us gathering in the "piano room" to sing old hymns and laugh as we would try to harmonize.  All of us kids have sat at the key board and learned songs like "Jesus Loves Me", and "I Dropped My Dollie In The Dirt" such wonderful memories of when all was right with the world ...  that's what's coming home to my house this weekend. And not to forget any who sat at this nucleus of our family gatherings, I am planning on framing pictures of my family playing this piano so that others get to see just a little of what this piano means to us, to me, it's pretty crazy seeing pictures of me and my children around the same age smiling from the piano.  Come by if you can, to see it yourself, touch the keys, smell it, maybe it will help you remember the objects that don't replace the people by any means but  make you go back to those moments in time. I will post pictures when we get it all set up.