If You Can't Play the Violin, Then Write!

There are always gifts that are handed down to us by our families. My grandmother Ooma was a singer. One of my earliest memories of her was singing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan. My father played the cello. My sister played the flute. One of my brothers played the violin. My other brother played the oboe, the clarinet, and the piano. Well, everyone played the piano. I played the...I played. I think I always wanted to be just plain playing rather than practicing the piano.


My feelings about piano lessons came out in The Secret Life of a Boarding School Brat (Holiday House). Here is the scene between Lydia and her music teacher, Mrs. Clarke:

"What have you been working on?" Mrs. Clarke asked. I was going to tell her I hadn't practiced in awhile. I actually started to, but her perfume and bad breath made me not want to open my mouth. I was having trouble even breathing. I barely manged to start the Clementi which was the last thing I had been working on a hundred years ago. I started to play, but my hands weren't connected to my brain. I saw them reflected on the piano just above the keys. They looked like two lumpy fish. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mrs. Clarke smiling in that fake way she has when she is impatient.


"We haven't practiced much, have we?" she said. 
"No we haven't," I said...I curled my hands into fists.

                        *   *   *  *
"Well," she said with a big sigh, "do get on with it."
So I uncurled my hands and started playing again. I didn't care anymore how bad it was. I played for awhile.All of a sudden she stuck her arm right across my face, pointed to the music, and said, "Lydia, this is the fifth time you have missed the B-flat. I have been counting."


That's when I felt the prick in my chest, and the black and white piano keys were all blurry and mixed up with Mrs. Norma Clarke's white face, her black sweater, and the white flecks of dandruff on her black sweater. All I could smell was her perfume and bad breath, and here was this dry flaky arm across my face. The next thing I knew, I bit her. Oh ugh ugh ugh. I can still feel her dry flaky skin in my mouth...


Mrs. Norma Clarke stood up from the piano bench and yelled, "She bit me, she bit me!"

The truth is, I never bit my piano teacher, and although I never got beyond Clementi's I'm-not-even-sure

what number Sonata, I love music, and music plays constantly in the background of my Gill Park books. "It was the park music that did it," says one of the characters. "Growing up with it all my life--that's why I'm a musician now." Well, I couldn't play music so I write about it.

In The Gorillas of Gill Park (Holiday House),Will asks Mr. Pettingill what his favorite instrument is.

He considered a moment. "I think it used to be the sax. Or the trumpet. You can communicate joy with these two almost better than anything else--you know, a wild kind of joy. The kind that makes you want to dance or do handsprings."