Baby, You’ve Got The Music In You — What You Do With It Is Up To You

A musical odyssey of sorts

It was love at first plink when I could stand on my tippy toes with my chin scrapping the edge of the keyboard of my grandparents’ piano. Fascinated by the sound I’d plunk, bang, thump — do whatever my tiny fingers could do to make the instrument talk back to me.

Music is in my DNA. My paternal grandmother was a classically trained pianist who played and sang with the Fisk Jubilee University choir in the early 1900s. The touring ensemble composed of African American students sang spirituals acapella to raise funds for college. My dad could play too.

My maternal grandfather was a self-taught jazz piano player, as was his mother — side hustles for both. Little did I know, my musical journey would become a live wired thread weaving itself throughout my life like a magic carpet ride.

Classical music stirred something in my young soul when I was seven. Fur Elise, by Beethoven, imbedded in my memory like a worn chip still plays in the background anytime I reflect on that phase of my childhood. The intro still haunts.

Mom, a single parent by then, was lucky to find Mrs. Goings, my babysitter, who lived down the street from us.

I can still see Mrs. Goings’ round golden face, lit like the sun whenever children were present. Her auburn hair pulled back into a tight ponytail — an apron tied around her full waist.

She was always cooking something. Food to eat or food for thought.

She and her small family lived in a white duplex around the corner from my elementary school. A shy child, I felt comfortable the first time I met her. Upon entering her front door, a dark wooden staircase led from the foyer to the second level.

The room to the left where a baby grand piano was the only prominent feature besides two plastic covered chairs and a table with a lamp in between looked pristine, like a room in a museum.

French doors separated the piano room from the quiet story room where children from infancy to 10 years old were read stories to — encouraged to engage in quiet play. Big colorful pillows lined the walls as seating.

Mrs. Goings’ 15-year-old daughter, Yvonne, would bounce through and disappear through another door down a hallway. All doors leading to other rooms were closed, which heightened my curiosity — at 3:30 every day without fail, the doorbell chimed.

It was her daughter’s piano teacher — greeted at the door with minimal pleasantries.

This was serious business. Yvonne practiced daily for a classical music competition — on the clock every day once home from school. She had no time to grab a snack in between. The tension between an overbearing mother and a teenager who just wanted to exhale filled both rooms.

When Yvonne stomped through on her way to the piano, we knew to be quiet. We could hear her slender brown fingers warming up to Fur Elise. Except, I was the only one with my ear pressed to the wall, listening to every note until her session ended.

I was so enthralled with this teenager who looked like me being groomed to become a classical concert pianist that I started begging Mrs. Goings to allow me into the piano room to watch her daughter practice.

She would only let me in when all the other children left — the room cast a yellowish sacred glow from the sun streaming through the bay window. I felt special.

Until then I had only tinkered on the piano with my grandfather who lived back East. We didn’t have a piano at home in the City of Angels. When mom came to pick me up that day, I was so excited I almost peed my pants.

“Mommy, I want to take piano lessons! Please?”

“She can take lessons here,” Mrs. Goings said, as she winked in my direction.

“But we don’t have a piano at home for you to practice on, and I don’t think I can afford lessons right now anyway,” Mom said.

“Please mommy,” I said as crocodile tears welled up in my eyes.

“Gather your things, we’ll talk about it at home, let’s go.” “Don’t you have homework to do?”

When we got home, the begging continued. The yearning so compelling as I had wanted nothing this badly in my brief life. Okay, maybe a Barbie dollhouse.

Shortly after, I settled for ballet until it was time for me to go live with my grandparents again. I finally took piano lessons, but they became sporadic, based on mom’s gypsy lifestyle zipping from coast to coast. I lost interest.

Then there was dance class, guitar lessons, and school plays. I didn’t take my singing voice seriously until I was a teenager. By that time, too distracted to keep up with piano and guitar practice. My voice didn’t require lessons every Tuesday at 4:30.

I could sing anywhere — and I did. The shower, backseat of a car — with a few boy bands — in the studio recording as a professional. Eventually I toured Europe with a nine-piece ensemble for a year after college. But that’s another story.

I’ve often wondered the outcome if mom had captured this pivotal moment. Me at that heightened intersection of interest and desire — would I have continued the path of absolute musicianship?

Parental circumstance shapes our lives so much, sometimes adults miss important cues about their children right in front of their faces.

Moral of the story:

I believe children come here with their purpose tucked inside their wings, pinned to their spirit and ready to fly. Many know from the day they’re born what they’re supposed to do here on earth.

As parents, we need to be fully present to not only help unpin those wings, but see their strengths and talents — then direct them to blossom into the enlightened butterfly we all have the potential to be.

When life gets in the way — teach them to fly above.

Thanks for the “let’s get relational tag about classical music,” Kristina God.