I started playing piano when I was seven years old. My grandma had gifted our family with a piano a few years prior with the hope that one of us would learn to play, since she plays too. I was all too eager to learn. Throughout my childhood, I would sit down at the piano bench and randomly press keys, fervently wishing that the notes I hit would somehow make a song instead of the jumble of dissonance that I actually created. I was beyond excited to begin lessons that summer before second grade. I remember getting my new books, shiny and purple, and flipping through them, doubting that I could ever learn to read the strange markings inside. Those first few months I struggled with the basics, learning the right way to position my fingers on the keys and fighting my way through such classics as “Hot Cross Buns” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”
I took lessons for nine years, stopping when I was a sophomore in high school. Piano was the one thing that I did that I never grew sick of. When I was younger, I had a bad habit of joining a bunch of extracurriculars that seemed exciting at first but I that I would soon lose my passion for. Because my parents had a rule that I had to finish what I started, I wasn’t allowed to quit anything before my commitment to that thing was over, which lead to me counting down the days until I could be free of it. Soccer, dance, basketball, swimming, 4-H, tennis, and more—I’ve done it all, and there were always times when I found myself reluctant to go to practice or meetings. But piano was one thing that I never thought about quitting. Then, when I was 16, my longtime piano teacher told me that she was retiring. My last lesson with her was a very sad occasion. Before I left, she recommended some other teachers that I could take lessons with. Although I was not really excited about starting things over with a new teacher, I loved piano, so I figured that I would continue with lessons elsewhere. It was around that time that school, for me, started to become more difficult. I was taking a lot of hard classes for the first time, and I found myself with very little free time. The search for a new teacher got pushed to the side, until somewhere along the way I just decided that I wouldn’t be taking lessons anymore. I told myself that playing piano was frivolous, anyway; I knew that it wasn’t something that I was going to try to do professionally, so why spend time and money on it? I still played every once in awhile, but piano was eventually put on the backburner of my busy life.
Last fall, when I came to college, I found myself with the opportunity to take piano once again. After some thought, I decided that this was something I genuinely wanted to do. I missed piano: I missed the way I could get lost in a song, my everyday problems gone from my mind as I just focused on bringing the notes on the page to life. There’s something about making music, as opposed to just listening to it, that always fills me with joy. I decided that this was something that I really wanted to do for myself.The experience of playing again after so long was weird. Part of it was like riding a bike; the muscle memory doesn’t ever go away, and I found that my finger dexterity was as good as it had always been. I breezed through old songs that I still had memorized. On the other hand, I had pretty much forgotten all of the theory I had known, and learning new songs was a bit of a challenge, proving just how rusty I had become. Those first few weeks I nearly tore my hair out in frustration as I slogged through a Bach Invention, hitting more wrong notes than right ones.
Eventually, though, things started to come together. I got a few shorter pieces under my belt, and then started “Clair De Lune,” a piece that I’m still working on now and which I have really come to love. I’ve rediscovered the simple joy of playing an instrument. There’s something really rewarding about putting a lot of work into a difficult song and finally getting it right. By getting back into piano, I’ve remembered why I stuck with it for so many years. Looking forward, I know that, even if I don’t take always take lessons, I will keep making time to sit down at the piano bench and play, if only to escape from the real world for a little while and get lost in the music again.