“I Learned to Play the Piano At 91”
By Alma H. Bond
As a child, I was uninterested in learning to play an instrument as I was preoccupied with becoming an actress. As an adult, I was busy raising three children and working hard at becoming a psychoanalyst. I may have understood psychoanalytic theory but I remained a musical ignoramus.
At the age of five, I couldn’t carry a tune. When my mother said, “Shut up and let your brother sing,” I learned I was musically untalented and didn’t sing for 30 years. I did take piano lessons as a teenager for a few months where the teacher seemed to know only how to play with his right hand. I soon got rid of him.
Then when my children were babies, I rocked them to sleep singing as I figured they were too little to complain.
When they grew older, I bought a white upright piano decorated with purple polka dots which had a soft lovely tone. The children started piano lessons. Unsurprisingly in an unmusical family, they “didn’t take.” I alone sat among the polka dots and banged out my old favorites. I was too embarrassed to play around anyone else.
To my astonishment at age 90, I became obsessed with 1,000 songs racing through my head. How strange that someone who had no talent or deep interest in music was silently singing all day! Then in a sane moment it occurred to me that my need for music is an instinct that was ungratified. My unconscious mind was screaming that I am starved for music.
So I decided to buy a piano.
After looking into perhaps 100 advertised pianos, all of which I rejected because they were too large, expensive, blemished or screeched like cats howling at night, I found an eBay notice that a walnut spinet made by Estey was on sale for $250 but was worth $800.
I soon learned that every piano, even when made by the same manufacturer in the same year, has its own personality. I desperately hoped the temperament of this piano would jive with mine as it seemed right for me in every other respect.
Despite my thumping rendition, I got the feeling that once I learned to play it, the tones of the piano would flow with a bell-like clarity. The piano behaved as if it were made for me. It was small and would fit nicely into my living room beneath a large window, was made of beautiful walnut wood with real ivory keys and was delightful to look at.
I immediately fell in love with it and imagined myself up on a concert stage flawlessly playing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. I knew I must have that piano.
So I bought it and began to look for a piano teacher who would be willing to take on a 91-year -old beginner.
I practiced from a children’s book, with a six-year-old child pictured on the cover. I’m sure he played better than I. Was I humiliated to play so much worse than a small child? Only a little. But I was determined to accomplish my new ambition, to learn to play the piano well. I had to prove my mother wrong, that I could carry a tune, albeit on the piano.
I also believed that learning a whole new field would establish new neuron connections in my brain and might keep me around a bit longer.
My teacher, Jen, a lovely young woman, knows enough to encourage my banging away. Jen is delighted to add a woman of 91 to her grammar school clientele. On the first lesson, she taught me fingering which helped me place the notes correctly. Soon I was delighted to play Are you Sleeping, Brother John with both hands.
So far I’ve continued pounding away for a year. Do I imagine it or have people stopped laughing when I sit down at the piano? I practice at least an hour every day as my love affair with the piano continues to blossom.
I found out why I need to play the piano, I was playing Tura Lura Lura, an old Irish folk song. When I came to “I would give the world to hear that (mother’s) song again,” I burst into tears. My mother died over 50 years ago. I thought I had finished mourning her. It seems music reaches a part of me nothing else does.
Postscript:
Alma is now playing Ode to Joy. While it is not Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, her favorite piece of music, the Ode is part of its last movement. Alma is elated about it and feels that playing along with the rising of voices to the rafters is the closest she will ever get to Heaven.Alma H. Bond, PhD, is a psychoanalyst and the author of 19 published books. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University, graduated from the post-doctoral program in psychoanalysis at the Freudian Society, and was a psychoanalyst in private practice for 37 years in New York City. She "retired" to become a full-time writer but maintains a small practice in addition to writing.