Piano



     I had forgotten until tonight just how great a stress reliever playing the piano is. Just you, the piano, and an empty echoing room. I think I'd rather have that than a vacation sometimes.
     I had an extraordinarily stressful and frustrating evening today...just family difficulties and things not turning out the way I had expected, but that's a story for another day. So after all that I needed some quality alone time, something I don't get a lot of these days, being at home with mama most days and not having a car to myself to go places whenever I want. I had to practice some pieces anyway - I'm playing piano for the prelude of my sister Meagan's wedding tomorrow - so I just threw my notebook in the car, grabbed the church keys, and headed out.

     I love playing the piano. I've played for almost fifteen years now. It's one of the few things I can always count on to be relaxing and enjoyable, and I can just get lost in it for hours. Bad day, good day, bored, it works for whatever. But I know for a fact I don't want to make it a career. People have suggested it, I've thought about it before, but here's my reasoning. For one, it's not something that pays particularly well. Actually, not very much at all. There's something to doing what you love, but you still have bills. Two, I could teach, but that's the very last thing I'm cut out to do. Trust me. And most of all, something that's that much of a blissful freeing experience...I think if I did it everyday, all day, it would lose that special quality that makes it so much of a haven for me. Kind of like how you get burnt out on a food if you eat it every day for a month, I would hate to play piano so much I just loathed the experience. So, I'm still looking for that career, and I keep piano for myself.    

My date for prom was an hour late, I was mad enough to spit...so I'm playing piano. And about to yell at the person who took this picture to scat out of the room.

     I started playing when I was eight. My parents bought me a Sam's Club special keyboard for Christmas, you know - the one with the songs and different sounds built in? Yeah, that was something. I starting taking lessons that August from Ms. Cindy Coker. (I did get a real piano that year as well, thank the Lord!) I loved it so much, even practicing, I think I went through two lesson books that year. I stayed with Ms. Cindy a year, then Ms. Cindy decided to go for National Boards so I had to find a new teacher. My parents knew a lady in Pontotoc that had taught for a long time, so the next August I found myself with Ms. Terrena Kyle and never left.
     Ms. Terrena was amazing. By the time I graduated I thought of her as pretty much family. You see someone every single week and then some for ten or so years, and you get pretty close. She was an amazing piano teacher. Always challenging me to play that harder piece, to want to be a better musician, and a better person as well. I think she probably had to hold back my OCDness a little a few times haha. Perfectionists and music are well suited, but it sure makes for stressful days before recitals!
     I mostly appreciate that her teaching style was different than most piano teachers. I didn't just learn out of a lesson book and classical pieces. I always, always had a hymn of some kind working, from little simple ones when I started to big three-years-of-work arrangements for competition when I finished. I learned more from a hymnbook I think than in those lessonbooks, what I'm most comfortable and relaxed playing, and that's what I'm going to be using through most of my adult life.
     Ms. Terrena also let me have a big say in what I chose to play. If I brought in some arrangement of a song from a movie, we'd work on that. If I had a church thing I wanted to do, we'd work towards that. However I wanted to gear myself, that's where we would aim. Like the Chopin piece I had heard in one of my favorite movies when I was little. Took me forever to track down the right piece, then find the music. It was the hardest piece EVER to learn! And it took me about a year, but she didn't stop pushing me.
     My senior year, piano was one of my biggest things I did. I even had my photographer meet me at our church (twice) so I could take some of my senior pictures with the baby grand piano.

This was my fave out of the piano shots. I thought I color coordinated rather well :)

     I worked all year for a senior recital in May. That wasn't something that was required or anything. Ms. Terrena always had an end-of-the-year recital, but this was something I wanted to do, just to show how hard I had worked all these years.
     My biggest regret in college was that I didn't have more opportunity to play. Dorms are just not spacious places, and pianos are just not one of the things you take. I brought my keyboard the first year, but it just wasn't the same after playing on the real thing for so long. I also tried taking piano lesson a few times, but I never found a teacher I liked well enough to stick with. None had that personal touch like I'd had growing up, and my non-traditional teaching didn't mix well with the classical style everyone else used. Personally I like the way I grew up learning better...but that's my opinion!

     My recommendation to all you bloggers and blogger readers...start your kids, if you have them, in a hobby. Eight, nine is a great age. Piano, tennis, 4H, just something they think they'll like. Nothing dramatic, once a week is great. Don't overkill them with it, they'll hate it in a month. And if they don't like it (not like 'I don't like to practice', but like 'I'm going to puke if you make me go') don't kill them for it. I tried 4H for awhile, hated judging cow udders, so after a few months I stopped. No big drama. But if your kid finds something like I did with piano and sticks with it, when they're my age or older and have what I do in it, they'll be so happy they have it.

     If you're an adult, and you have something like my playing piano that you love, isn't it amazing!?! Everybody needs that one thing they have for a release. So what's your 'thing'? What do y'all love?

One day, when I get married, I'm absolutely taking this picture with our rings! I'd almost - that's ALMOST now, ya hear :) - be happy if my future hubby just gave me one of those baby grands instead of an engagement ring...but then again, I'd have to build an addition to my house just to put it in, and engagement rings are so much easier to carry around and show off haha.