Memoir - Sunday Morning Piano

You can tell yourself you’re ready all you want, but you really aren’t. That inevitable phone call still took me by surprise. The only home I could really remember, now empty of family, had finally sold. My sister called to say we had two weeks to empty it. Two weeks to empty a house of 50 years of love and memories? It felt like a family death, even though my parents were alive, simply old.

I made arrangements for my flight home. I would stay in my childhood home for a week, cleaning and packing and sorting – which memories to keep and which to let go. “You can’t miss my house,” I remember telling my school friends. “It’s the green one, with the tiny front step, right on the bend of the highway.” And there it was, same as always, lacking only my Mom watching for me from the front window.

Bypassing the solid oak front door stripped and refinished by my Dad, I entered the kitchen by the back door. Everyone used the back door. Only door-to-door salesmen rang the ancient twist doorbell at the front. I could easily have been just getting home from school. Same orange curtains; same bits of clutter on the table. Decades ago, my oldest sister melted a spot on the arborite table while she was ironing and my Mom had repaired it with white paint. Years ago. But there it was. And there was the same porcelain side sink where my Dad had washed up every evening after work.

I wandered into the dining room with its fancy tin ceiling and Dad’s piano. Mine now. Sunday mornings, I would wake to the sound of the hymns he loved to play. Ghosts of company dinners and family gatherings were waiting for me. Just how much Christmas pudding with extra sauce had my cousin and I shared at this table?

The Christmas tree always had a habit of falling over, so Dad had finally screwed a hook into the ceiling to prevent further disasters. There it was, still in the living room. The new owners were bound to wonder. Our set of Special Edition World Book Encyclopedias was still there in the bookcase. Any projects that my brother and I had to do, we were confident those encyclopedias would provide the necessary information.

Caressing the smooth cherry wood banister, I climbed my steep childhood stairs to the tiny bedrooms and the attic. I was never allowed in the attic, but how could I resist unlatching a tiny elf size door to see what might be discovered on the other side? Mom would tell me not to be so nosy and to get out quick before I fell through the floor boards into the kitchen below. Now, looking around, I could feel only grief. The childhood curiosity was gone. I knew I would discover trinkets and treasures with histories older than myself. But these stories would remain untold. They would remain with my parents who were no longer able to tell them. I only had one week to sort and pack my own, shed my tears, and say my final good-byes.