Week 13 - Music - Our Families

 

Week 13: Music - Our Families

Every family seems to have musically talented people. I vividly recall my cousin Joyce sitting at the piano playing show tunes in the early 1950s. She had a wonderful talent. Her teacher was a neighbor woman who was a graduate of the Julliard School of Music in New York City. How special that was! Joyce went on to take organ lessons when she was 50, and played for her church for many years. At 87, she still sits in to play on occasion. On my wife’s side of the family, her brother plays the piano and has directed the church choir. Her nephew Blake has his Bachelor of Arts in Music and makes his living as a pianist, vocalist and conductor.

 

I smile at all this musical talent because my mother tried to teach me the piano and then the violin at about age 5 or 6 but failed because of my lackadaisical approach to learning at that age. Later in grade school, I tried to learn the trumpet but fizzled on that instrument too. Of course, if I had the talent of a prodigy, I’m sure it would have been discovered. Sadly, no such luck for my very musical parents.

My wife and I, while discussing this week’s topic, particularly marveled at the parallel musical experiences of our own parents.

In his teens, my father learned to play the trumpet and French horn. He expanded his musical talents to include the cello in his twenties. My mother had grown up playing the piano. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Music and expanded her talents into playing the organ and viola. They met in 1938 in the string section of their community orchestra. My mother died at the young age of 36, and my father remarried a couple of years later. He met his second wife at the Hollis Methodist Church where they sang in the choir together. They were married for 44 years. Dad met his third wife, a piano teacher who sang in yet another church choir. They were married seven years before she passed away. My dad, now in his nineties, had no interest in marrying again. But at age 96, he still had a burning desire to learn to play the saxophone. He took a few lessons and played for his own entertainment until he was almost 100.

My wife’s parents had a similar track. They met at the University of Washington in the collage band where her dad played trombone and her mother played clarinet. He was a music major, who played everything but the guitar and bassoon. After college, he began his lifelong occupation as a school music teacher and church choir director. Tara’s mother died at 33. Her dad’s second wife was both a pianist and the church organist. A third marriage brought him together with yet another talented pianist.

Makes us wonder who and where we would be today without music.😊