Finally, A Piano

Mario Campanale tunes our new Bentley piano. Not connected with the auto maker, it is  nevertheless a respected piano maker.

Amazing to see the piano taken apart. Nice to have a professional doing the work.

It had been obvious that Holly was not enthused about piano lessons because she didn’t have a piano to play. We had a Yamaha keyboard that friends gave us. It wasn’t a weighted keyboard. It felt like a toy. I tried to tell her that if she wanted to play piano, she would have to get over that and just persevere. That didn’t really solve the problem. If she was going to continue, we would have to get a piano.

We looked and looked. We had friends praying for us. There are thousands of bad pianos on eBay, and Freeserve, and Gumtree. People give away pianos for free. That’s because they are so bad, they can’t sell them. We knew none of these were going to inspire Holly to practice. We almost bought one piano, but the auction time expired, and the seller wouldn’t respond to us. Frustrating.

On eBay Joanie found a piano owned by one lady, which was a four-out-of-five star rated brand. We bid on it and prayed that the Lord would close the door if it was not His piano for us. And then we won! This is the piano!

Joanie found a piano mover to deliver it. Then she called Mario Campanale, a piano tuner we knew. He brought it up to pitch and serviced it. He reckoned it hadn’t been tuned in twenty years. We replied we planned to play it and use it and wear it out. Joanie is playing more now. Holly is on it everyday. I love the sound in the house, and I can’t always tell who is playing. I love that, too.

A funny side effect: Joanie and I became aware that having a piano in the living room says to us, “Home”. We grew up in families that always had a piano there. So now we are home. That’s a funny feeling, twenty-five years down the road. You would think it’s about time. Thank the Lord for answering our prayers and helping us this far, and making our place a home.