My parents raised four kids in a tiny house.  My sister and I shared a bedroom, and my other sister and my brother shared a bedroom.  After that sister got to be of a ‘certain age,’ though, she moved in with the two of us and my brother got his own room.  So unfair.  The house had a small living room and a small dining room.  How small were they?  Over half of the dining room was taken up by the grand piano.

 

Yes.  In our house, we didn’t have a table and chairs in the dining room.  I was probably in junior high before I knew that people ate in their dining rooms.  We didn’t.  We played the piano, and sang, and practiced our violins and violas, and watched tv in our dining room. 

 

Eventually, Mom and Dad did buy a dining room set, but we seldom ate there.  It was covered with clutter.  (Kind of like my dining room table, now.)  (maybe it’s hereditary?)  But the purchase did force us to move the tv into the living room for a while.

 

I loved that grand piano.  I used to sit under it and read, or pretend things.  Castles.  Princesses.  Caves.  I used to sit on top of it and play sailing ship.  Flying carpet.  I wasn’t supposed to climb on top of it, but I couldn’t resist.  My shoe buckles put scratches all over the top of the piano.  I always had a sore throat when I was a kid, and I bet there are at least a hundred half-sucked cough drops here and there between the strings of that piano, right NOW.  Or maybe not, as the piano has been serviced several times since then.  I had more fun with that grand piano than I ever had with any of my toys.  I played on it, and I played ON it, and I played under it, too.  Kenju would understand.

 

My parents knew that a grand piano that took up a great proportion of the living space needed by a big family wasn’t very practical, so eventually Mom sold it to a friend of hers.  I cried for days.  The beautiful spinet piano that eventually replaced it was lovely, but it wasn’t my grand piano. 

 

It’s surprising how soon we all got used to having all that extra room in the house.  Wow.  We kids hadn’t even known we were so cramped.  We’d never known any other way for a dining room to be!  We moved the tv back and set it against a wall I hadn’t even known was there.  It stayed in that spot for about fourteen more years, till we moved to a bigger house just in time for one of the sisters to get married and move out.  A year later, I moved out.  My youngest sister ended up with a room of her own, which is something I have never had in all my life.  And so did my brother.  He also got a car, but I won’t go there.  I also won’t mention how he got to go to Florida over a high school spring break and none of the rest of us ever did.

 

Back to Mom’s friend who bought our piano. . . . .  years later, she put an ad in the paper for the piano.  My cousin/friend C saw the ad, needed a piano for her three young sons, went to look at it, and bought it.  She had it refinished, and it’s still in her house, and it’s still beautiful.  And, it’s still in the family!

 

My parents’ beautiful spinet piano now resides in MY living room. (On an inside wall, which is very important. . . .)  My dining room contains a large table and many chairs, and a hutch, all very normal dining room things.  You’ll be sitting there when you come over.  When you visit you might also notice that there’s a humongous stereo system in there, but doesn’t everybody have immense speakers and a thumpin’ cd jukebox in the dining room?  What, you eat in silence? 

 

Bummer.