The Piano

         I’m one of them Carpenter kids. Rat and Jo’s kids; they live over on James in the grocery store. You know Rat ?  He’s one of them Carpenter kids.  Ben and Aggie’s kids; they lived over on Union.  You remember Aggie?  House burned down and she and that girl got caught in the house and died.  Ben went crazy and they put him in the nuthouse in Ogdensburg.  He was one of them Carpenter kids. Ben was Mary’s son lived on the creek.  She was a housekeeper at Hubbard House.  Husband died when Ben was just a few months old.  They let her take leftover food for the kids.  You remember that, don’t you?  She was a Carpenter kid…

         In my home town, you are who you came from, not who you are. Ancestral fingerprints identify you before your smile or name. Every Carpenter kid shook hands with trouble on their way out of the birth canal. Trouble was unavoidable, like a dog and a dead fish. It didn’t help that temptations set by the Devil himself were everywhere and I’m sad to say we shamefully succumbed.

        Midnight buoy hopping. Make-out parties in open boathouses. A coal dock over 300 feet high with a ladder that lead you up to the top if you were drunk enough.  That spectacular jump landed you into a current going to Canada or rocks that smashed your head open. Both choices were noble when you were drunk enough.       My brother Dave swam the channel between Clayton and Calumet Island at 5;30 in the afternoon, when boat traffic is the heaviest and he still has his head! Hah!

         A horde, a gang, a flock, a pack, a multitude, a bunch of us kids use to play a magnificent trick on the city slickers pretty much every day in the summer.  The tourists would go down to the Emporium Boat Line where my father was gainfully employed as a tour boat operator. When the massive engines revved up for take off, they created a roiling, bubbling whirlpool cauldron with a wicked undercurrent that Neptune could have stepped out of.  On the count of three, we’d all jump in and pretend to drown.  “Help!  Help!” The boat would list to one side as the benevolent visitors reached out to us pleading with the pilot to stop.  Then we’d jump out of the water onto the dock and stick out our tongues. My father’s voice would come over the loudspeaker. “No need to worry folks, just the neighborhood kids having some fun.”

         The opportunities nature gave us to exercise stupidity were miniscule compared to the opportunities that our fellow citizens afforded us. 

         We had an English teacher whose son taught Social Studies across the hall from her.   She would leave her classroom to cross the hall to rescue her son from “the Carpenter vermin.”  “You rotten Carpenter kids, leave my son alone!” We would get her so angry we could hear her garters snap. The guidance counselor was a barn owl impersonating an alcoholic. We’d walk by him, real slow, and poke him or stare at him. He’d lift his eyebrow feathers and hoot “who, who?” We had a vice principle with an enormous wart on his cheek that was too easy to outrun and on and on and on.

         We were those Carpenter kids…too noisy, too rowdy, too defiant, too, too, too. 

         When I wanted to take piano lessons at seven years old, it was somewhat of a shock, like volunteering to clean the bathroom.

         “What piano?” my Dad said. 

         “What, piano?” my mother gasped a sigh of relief.          Lessons cost $3.50 an hour with Sister George at St. Mary’s convent. Sister George taught drum set, trumpet, piano and saxophone. She also taught accordion to boys and girls who hadn’t developed yet.

         “Carl, a child needs beauty in her life.  Let her take the lessons.”

         “Josephine, they are ridiculously expensive.  She won’t stick with it anyway and for God’s sake, we don’t have a piano.” 

         The Lord works in mysterious ways but mothers don’t.

         She pulled money out of her grocery stash and each of my brothers and sisters gave up some of their allowance so I could take lessons.  I was, after all, a Carpenter kid and we stuck together. 

          Every day after school, I went to the convent and practiced for at least half an hour. I found God and the Devil in the sharps and flats of the piano at that convent every day for three years. A piano holds the perfect order of the cosmos.  There are trapeze artists of suspended thirds jumping over to fourths. Arpeggiated ski jumps land on chords. There is a discernible and reliable pattern of notes and sounds.  There is dissonance followed by resolution. You give and you get in perfect order and in perfect time.

         I came home from school one day and saw a 5 x 7 x 3 foot rectangle in the kitchen covered with a pink ratty old quilt. 

         “ What’s under the quilt, Mom?”

         My mother spit out, “Don’t tell your father.”   

         “Pinky swear mom.” 

         She tiptoed over to the quilt and lifted it dramatically like a magician revealing his prized pigeons.  It was an altar that just happened to look like a shining black lacquer console piano.

         The Lord works in mysterious ways but mothers don’t.

         My mother had gone into Watertown, picked out the piano and had it delivered without asking my father.  “Now Regi, when your father gets home don’t say a word and do what I tell you.”

         “Pinky swear Mom.”

         Supper was ready when Dad came through the door. Piled high on the table were all of his favorite foods and a big glass of beer.  The first thing he said was, “What’s under the quilt Josephine?”

         “ Now Carl, she’s really working very hard.”

          “What’s under the quilt Josephine?”

         “She’s the best of all the kids who take lessons.”

         “What’s under the quilt Josephine?”

         “I’ve arranged to pay only five dollars a month for twelve years.”

         “What’s under the quilt Josephine?”  He tore the quilt off and bellowed, “It’s going back tomorrow!”  

         My eyes filled with tears.  My mother shushed me and told me to sit down before the food got cold.  She didn’t say a word about it all during dinner.  My father made grunting lip smacking sounds.  She served up the warm apple pie with fresh cream for dessert and said, “Regi, why don’t you play something for your father before the piano goes back tomorrow?”  I sat down and all the love, the desire and the wonder a girl can feel poured out of me and into the piano for the entire evening.  My mother didn’t say a word.  My father hid his face behind the paper.

         The Lord works in mysterious ways but mothers don’t. 

          Whatever she did between ten that night and seven the next morning worked because we kept the piano. 

         When I fool myself into thinking I never loved my mother or her me, I remember that she bought a piano for me and on it, all the sweetness between us was played out. 

While I was in Utica I think I saw some of the saddest children I have ever met.  Who knows why- home, school, life circumstances.  I watched them turn from sullen and disinterested children to laughing and engaged children during the performances.  I remembered the power of the story, giving space to the images, being in the moment and most importantly, to really be with the children and share their excitement and astonishment as they heard these tales for the first time.

The IRA was incredible.  There were 20,000 people gathered to promote literacy throughout the world. My workshop was packed with teachers, administrators, and specialists who ate up the stories and made them their own.  It was a great experience to share and learn from other professionals in this field.

Finally, I wrapped up my fifth class of Children and the Arts. College students on the road to becoming teachers learn how to tell a story, make puppets, sing, dance and understand the creative process.  It’s really cool to see them unfold and let go of all their fear of being judged.  I guess they are really learning to be kids again.

 I also had an opportunity to present my new piece “Love is War” in my hotel room on Saturday night  to about 15 other storytellers and one of my coaches and mentors, Loren Niemi. It was a really special night as I got to tell the story of my parents meeting in WWII.  It was rather bittersweet as it was the first public telling of this piece after my father’s death in January.  As I was telling it I could see and hear him as he told me these stories.  My father was a great and complicated man.  Telling this archetypal and deeply personal tale is a way to pay tribute to my father and the soldiers of his generation and speak of the affects of war on a whole generation of people. “Love is War” is the piece I will be performing in August at the National Storytelling Conference in Gatlinsburg, Tn.  

I was also privileged to work with Susan Klein again as a coach. Susan has been a lighthouse in a sea of messy story!  Her clarity and frankness have helped me immeasurably.  

Aside from the things that I did what struck me the most is the patience one needs to become excellent at one’s craft.  It takes time to hear your own voice, and to master the multitude of skills and facets of one’s work.  The old Supreme’s song “You can’t hurry love, you just have to wait”  keeps looping in my head.