Rebecca Calvo's Photography Blog

The Christmas that I turned 4, my parents bought me a little pink piano almost like the one in this picture.  I don’t have many pictures of myself as a child, but I do have a photo of myself and my mom in front of the Christmas tree with my little pink piano.

I loved that piano.  I made up songs, and I played songs that I knew by ear.  From that point on, I knew I wanted to learn to play the piano.

When I turned 7, my mom and my grandma, both of whom were raising me at the time, bought me a real piano.  It was a Steinway, it was shiny black, and it was beautiful.  I picked up where I left off as a 4 year old, teaching myself songs that I already knew and making my own melodies.

I waited patiently for the day that I would take piano lessons.

Just a few short years later, my mom re-married and we moved to a new city, leaving my grandma behind.  I got a new puppy, and my grandma got the piano.

I never took piano lessons, and that piano never found its way back into my life.

In the summer of 2000, my good friend Brian Holdsworth showed up to my house on a Saturday morning with a very big gift.  It was a piano…black, with gold lettering, like my beloved Steinway.  It made me ecstatic to once again hear those beautiful notes coming from my dining room.  My son, Zac, after 2 years of learning piano on a keyboard, finally had a real piano to play on.  He began taking lessons again, and he made that piano his own with the beautiful classical music he was learning to play.  He went on to major in Music in college and now makes a living singing and playing piano.

Each one of my children has learned to play that piano.  It has created and re-created every type of music that they have obsessed over, from classical to Broadway tunes.  It has had been a companion to suffering, joy, pride anxiety, accomplishment and recreation.

Today, it stands quietly in the family room, waiting for another determined musician to grace its keys.  I imagine that every time someone comes down the stairs, it holds its breath in anticipation that the little black stool in front of it will be occupied and its keys will move again. 

Every now and then, I come across that picture of my mom and I next to my little pink piano on that Christmas morning; and every time I do, I can swear that I hear a beautiful black Steinway with gold letters calling to me from downstairs…

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