Teenage rebellion soothed by tinkling the ivories

TEENAGERS today are the most repulsive, revolting, rebellious young people since… since… since… me.
When I was 11, we moved from quite a small house to what was then a des res in our neighbourhood.
Actually, my parents punched way above their weight in the purchase of it but by then, almost all the family was working. Responsible and dutiful, my siblings assisted my parents financially, buying various furnishings for our home. My eldest sister bought a piano. A piano! I discovered instantly an inherent ability to play music by ear, note perfect. I had no desire and never learned to read music then and still don’t but music has always been intrinsic to my soul and I rapidly developed quite a repertoire.
Then, suddenly and explosively, I became something my parents had never encountered in the rest of the family. I morphed into a teenager and my bewildered parents didn’t know what hit them. Skirts up to… ahem and big hair. High heels, nails and eyelashes resembled lethal weapons.
People should never, ever judge a book by the cover because despite the ‘look’, despite the clothes, despite the fact that I was gossip fodder for country relatives, I was actually exceptionally morally well-behaved.
Being badly behaved was not an option. As the youngest of eight, my three older brothers and three sisters acted as surrogate parents, so effectively four sets of parents were all intent on monitoring Mary.
The hormones were all over the kip, though, and I was in perpetual battles with the parents over what I considered to be legitimate requests to go here or there – places perceived by them to be dens of iniquity, such as the school disco or local tennis club.
Similar to how small children cuddle their teddies and confide secrets to them, my refuge following such rows was the piano. The piano was in the sitting room, a room reserved for visitors. Generally, we were all gathered in the kitchen or living room, so the sitting room was an oasis of calm, peace and tranquillity. When I found myself “in times of trouble… in my hour of darkness,” I fled to the piano – and there were many confrontations in those turbulent years.
When I was 19, my then boyfriend came to our house every Friday night, as we could afford to go out only on Saturday and Sunday. The family was crazy about that particular guy and my dad commandeered him at every opportunity for a game of chess. Although that Adonis hadn’t one note of music – totally tone deaf – he displayed a genuine interest in the piano. And so, ‘playing by numbers’ was invented. Discreetly numbering each note, I taught him three beautiful pieces and, interestingly, he had an innate and gentle touch.
That same year, the sister who had bought the piano got married and took the piano with her. Granted, it was technically hers… or was it, after eight years? A moot point, I suppose.
My teenage rows with all four sets of watchful parents had magically – or merely naturally – lessened by then. Lessened, not disappeared. Embroiled in a sudden, familiar explosion one evening, I fled in tears to my refuge, my… my… my… piano? Skidding to a stop in the sitting room, I almost landed on my ass as I aimed it in the general direction of the piano stool.
Grief and disbelief engulfed a me when confronted by a blank wall. Pole-axed doesn’t even begin to describe the desolation experienced way back then and still vividly remembered.
But, hey, life didn’t end for me – it had ‘only just begun’. Discos, girlfriends, boyfriends, work – those were ‘the special years’. We all know how it is then – years seem to blend seamlessly whilst rearing and educating a family. Working again full-time through their teenage years, sudden infant death of an only daughter, major illness, failed business ventures, actually, everything that’s way up there on the stress list, left little time to even consider tinkling any ivories even had I owned a piano. But as Elton John sings, ‘I’m Still Standing’.
Although happy where we lived during the frenetic years of child-rearing, re-locating to ‘here’ from ‘up there’ was a dream come true. Literally, we are ‘the folks who live on the hill’, with panoramic views that money couldn’t buy. The empty nest is actually a hive of activity in its own right, complemented but not dependent on visits from the fully grown fledglings.
I celebrated my birthday recently. Just quietly – no big deal. Popping out to the kitchen for a couple of hours to complete some chores, I did a double-take on stepping back into our sitting room. Ensconced at the wall-to-wall window, overlooking the fantastic view, was a fabulous digital piano. In the armchair nearby, pretending the piano had materialised by pure magic, was my husband, the Adonis of all those years ago, the one I had taught to ‘play by numbers’. Speech was unnecessary – and impossible through the tears. Recovering, I sat down to play and the years simply vanished.