One Single Moment by Don Taco

 

One Single Moment

by Don Taco

 We were a family of seven, fatherless due to cancer, living in the heart of the middle class, but well below 'poor' income levels. We weren't eating dirt, except for Bill, who couldn't be left alone near the garden until he was about four. But we certainly weren't eating caviar.

  In spite of that, our mother manged to afford a piano. In those days, you could get a decent playable instrument for $100, same as a car, though you'd be well-advised to get it tuned regularly, also the same as a car.

  Being the oldest, I was given the choice of taking piano lessons. It would have been difficult to fit them into my schedule. I wasn't going to quit the chess club or soccer to struggle with a task that I didn't believe I had the motivation or the dexterity for. And I still think I was right about that, though I can see that an introduction to theory and a grasp of the keyboard would certainly have been valuable. No regrets.

  All the other five children had no choice. They sat down to their lessons. Not a single one of them plays piano today. It did lead Bill to the guitar, though, so it wasn't completely wasted effort.

  When all the children had left the nest, and the five sets of lessons were no longer being paid for, our mother sat down and started to learn to play herself. Which, in retrospect, was probably her primary motivation in the first place.

  Time went on, and she reached a certain level of introductory play that just didn't seem to improve. She could run through a small number of pieces that her children were sick to death of hearing, and, in fact, I believe that even she was tired of. But she refused to be a quitter. She struggled and applied herself and tried to stretch the boundaries of that plateau for about five years beyond the point that she could see she'd never get any better and would never achieve the goal fo playing the piano anywhere near the ability level she'd hoped for.

  Then one day she said, "Fuck it! I am not a quitter. I tried." She stopped trying, got rid of the piano, whose primary purpose by now was to display Avon products for sale, and never looked back.

  However. And this was a Big Deal. She told us of a moment in the middle of this process, a moment that changed everything. One day, struggling along at the keyboard, between one heartbeat and the next, the squiggles and dots on the page in front of her stopped being notation and turned into music. She had learned to read music. And as a singer, this was quite a valuable skill shift.

  I don't think she valued this as highly as it deserved, since it seemed to her such a lower goal than what she was aiming for. But she did receive a reward for all that effort.  And it happened in a single moment.