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Another past writing prompt that I’m revisiting. This one asked me to think about a beloved object from my childhood. My first thoughts were, wow, my memory is bad. At the prompt, my mind blanked, and I couldn't think of anything to write. My memory is porous, and when I close my eyes and think back to the past, I just see a dark gray fog. I think of all of these writers out there penning their memoirs and autobiographies, rifling through their memories and capturing crystal-clear scenes of childhood laughter, drama, and tears. And all I could see was mud.
But then I thought about my Yamaha piano. A gleaming black upright. Gold accents. The more that I think about this seemingly simple object, the more memories flood in. Good. Warm. Comforting. Conflicting. Painful.
My parents bought me the piano as I was learning to play, but I had no good piano to practice on. This was in Okinawa, Japan, where my father was in the US Marines. Hot and humid days meant that this majestic instrument was often out of tune. I don’t know if we ever had a piano tuner come in. But we really didn’t know any better, so we just kept playing it.
My sister, Julie, and I went to a music school on the small military base that we lived on. Julie took flute lessons, and I took piano. I vaguely remember my piano teacher. A stern Japanese woman. She knew I was Filipina, so she gave me a beautiful Filipino piece that I eventually played at a recital. It was “My Soul’s Lament,” by Franciso Buencamino. A somber song with octave-spanning chords hopping across the pages. I remembered practicing that until my left hand ached. I remember being petrified before going on stage, and then I remember a wonderful sense of accomplishment as I finished the piece and took a bow.
But the school was hiding something rotten. I remember Julie and I being pulled aside to speak to investigators because there were accusations of abuse from a teacher. Had anyone hurt us or touched us? No. Not that I remember. Still, we were left with a feeling of shame, though nothing had happened to us, and we left the school all the same.
But I kept practicing.
I remember that the piano was a source of jealousy. My sister hated the fact that I got this big, beautiful piano when all she got was a flute. When we fought our raging fights, I would throw her flute across the room, and, in retaliation, she poured syrup across all the keys of the piano. For years afterwards, some of the keys would stick. Oh my god, how we would rage against each other.
And yet, when the storms were over, we played together. We learned pieces to play together, though the names of the pieces are escaping me just now. The piano traveled with us from Okinawa to Oceanside, California, to Harlingen, Texas, back to California, and finally to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I didn’t bring it with me to college of course. Just my piano books traveled with me. I found a beautiful grand piano at Stern Hall, where I first stayed at UC Berkeley. I would practice in the common room, watching through the floor-to-ceiling windows as the fog would roll into the bay.
But where is that old Yamaha now? Where is it now that I’m far from my childhood home and now that Julie is gone?
It sits in my brother-in-law’s house. I hope that my niece and nephew play it every now and then. I hope that as they brush their fingers across the smooth ivory keys that they can hear echoes of the music, of the laughter, of the singing that the piano once witnessed.
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