The Piano

Brock plays the piano and I don’t, but love to hear him to play. It relaxes him at the end of the day, he’s a tremendous musician and I could listen to him for hours at a time, and music is a great habit to have around the house. He owned a nice piano, but it was at his parent’s house and we couldn’t get it here. We thought about trying to bring it out, but really, we thought, where would we put it anyway?

Brock really missed having a piano (though he also plays the guitar and sings, there’s something different about a piano). I wanted so much to find him a nice one that could fit in our house, but I didn’t know what made a good piano and Craig’s List was coming up short for once. Brock began saying he would probably give up on the piano and focus on the guitar instead. He was unhappy about it, but we just couldn’t justify spending money we didn’t have on something that we probably couldn’t fit in our house anyway. Then we got a sudden miracle.

Brother Jim Welch in our ward plays the organ professionally. He plays at a few different churches in the area and this turned to our advantage one day. He came to us and said he knew we were musical, but did we have a piano? Of course, we didn’t. He told us that in one of the other churches he played for an elderly woman had just died and her husband wanted to get rid of her piano. He had donated it to his church, but they told Jim that they already had more than ten pianos that had been donated in a similar way and were of no use to them. They asked Jim if he knew of anyone who loved music and didn't already have a piano--someone who needed it. He said we came to mind.

Brock jumped at the offer. We would fit in our tiny place somehow. He got one of our home teachers (Kent Taylor) to help him move the piano and we somehow got it in. We knew it was bad for the piano to be against an outside wall, but that’s the only kind of wall we had. We thought it through and moved things a couple of times and somehow, in the end, we not only got everything in, but we had more free space in the living room than before. That was a little staggering. How could we have added a whole piano to an already packed room and end up with more space?

So, Brock got his piano. Now he plays often and is back to writing music again. I love to hear him playing when I get home from work, or get up in the morning.