ON LEARNING TO PLAY THE PIANO IN THE BATHROOM

            This past Sunday I accompanied on the piano a men’s double trio singing the stirring hymn “High on the Mountain Top.”  Some members of the congregation, surprised to learn that I played the piano, went out of their way to compliment me on the confident and resolute way I performed.  Few had any idea that I also play the organ and that at one point in my career I studied with Dr. John Longhurst, who became a celebrated organist for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

While acknowledging the appreciative comments, I said nothing about my musical training.  Instead my mind raced back to when I was six years of age and just learning to play the piano in Aunt Lee’s bathroom. Yes, the bathroom, for that’s where she gave piano lessons.  It was a long narrow room with a door at one end that led outside; that was the means by which students and parents entered.  A door at the other—where the sink, bathtub, and toilet were located—led to her bedroom, where a large mutt was stationed to keep waiting students or parents from exploring the house, which overflowed with antique furniture and glassware.  Occasionally the dog would wander in, glance at students or parents, drink from the toilet bowl, and then retire again to the bedroom.  In addition to the upright piano and its wide bench, on which Aunt Lee and the student sat, were a captain’s chair, a banker’s table with a secret drawer, and a safe from one of three banks that Aunt Lee’s husband had been president of.

Once Aunt Lee realized that I was serious about my musical pursuits, she purchased a Henry F. Miller piano for my parents’ home.  She promised that if I practiced and learned to sight read songs and hymns, I would never lack for friends.  Her promise has proven true in many different settings, and today’s blog pays tribute to my first piano teacher—Aunt Lee, who insisted that I call her simply “Lee.”  (Her father, born before the “War of Northern Aggression,” named her after General Robert E. Lee.)  Therefore, that’s how I’ll now refer to her, not out of disrespect but rather out of respect for her wishes.

There’s no way to put it except to declare it honestly:  Lee was a character!  She felt that the epithet “aunt” made her sound too old.  Even though she lived to be 97 years and 9 months, she never admitted her age except when she applied for Social Security.  She “doctored” the birth dates in the family Bible to make herself appear much younger than she was.  She even gave a false age when she married a much older man, listing herself as 39 when she was really 51.  (When they married, he was 68 and had already been president of the three banks.)  Her motto was simple:  “A lady never tells her age, and a gentleman never asks.”

The month before I was born Lee’s aged husband passed away, and she came to live with us for six weeks, helping my mother take care of me as a newborn.  We remained bonded for the rest of her life.  When I was two years of age, Lee announced to my mother that I could write Lee’s name.  Mother was incredulous until Lee gave me a pencil and urged me to write her name.  I carefully wrote a capital L, followed by two more capital L’s that—with the addition of parallel lines—became E’s.  That’s how the legend started that “Madison could write at age two.”  By the time I was five, it is true that Lee had taught me the notes of the treble and bass clefs by drawing musical staffs on white butcher paper and then teaching me the notes through mnemonic devices, such as the treble spaces spelled FACE and the treble lines (EGBDF) were represented by the sentence Every Good Boy Does Fine.

I wasn’t above taking bribes, and Lee promised me a dollar bill if I learned to sight read and sing “Oh, Susanna!”  I mastered the song in record time.  After a few years, however, she realized that I wasn’t taking her as seriously as I should and that there needed be more distance between pupil and teacher.  That’s when Lee turned me over to Miss Mabel and paid for me to take from a much stricter teacher.  Miss Mabel sat in her own chair next to the piano bench and held a long wooden pointer that she was rumored to rap across your fingers if you played the wrong note.  (To my knowledge she never did that, but the rumors sufficed to make most of us pay close attention to the notes we played.)

Miss Mabel was as eccentric as Aunt Lee but in a different way.  Miss Mabel wore a Borgia poison ring, attended the real Chautauqua in New York state every summer, had a photo of herself astride a camel with the Great Pyramid in the background, and featured “modern art” above the organ in her living room.  Like Lee, Miss Mabel attended the Piggott Methodist Church, and soon they colluded to have me playing the piano and later the organ for church services.  It was nerve-wracking at first, and it didn’t help that at my organ debut I misheard the title of the closing hymn.  I began playing one hymn while the congregation started singing a different one. We made it through a discordant first line, at which point a choir member charitably placed his copy of the hymnal with the correct hymn in front of me, and we started afresh with a hymn I had not practiced.  Fortunately I was a good sight reader, a talent that has remained with me over the intervening years.

Decades later when Lee could no longer live in her home because of advanced age, we had an auction to sell her household furniture, including three upright pianos.  The president of a college attended and shared with me he had studied piano with my aunt.  Then he paused and said reflectively, “The greatest lessons she taught me on that piano bench had little to do with music.”  He asserted, “I am who I am because of the ‘life lessons’ she taught me.”  (He didn’t add, “in the bathroom,” but we both knew where she had taught those lessons.)  His comment made me reflect on things she had taught me before, during, and after piano lessons:  “Don’t ever smoke tobacco or drink alcohol.”  “You can always ask for ginger ale at a party.”  “Study the Bible and memorize favorite verses.”  “Don’t procrastinate, for procrastination is ‘the thief of time’.”  “Travel widely.”  “Read great books.”  “Always accept the invitation to play the piano.”

How different my life would have been if I had not had my Aunt Lee’s teachings to help mold me into the person I am today.  Now it’s incumbent upon me—and indeed upon all sentient and caring adults—to become such “uncles” and “aunts” who are willing to teach “life lessons” to the children and young people we know and love.