Losing Music

I was 8 years old when I first

placed my fingers on the

luminous white ivory keys of

a piano. Next to me, a nun

touched each finger into place.

A year later, I wore a white

lace dress in my first piano

recital. Every day for two

years, I took lessons from that

nun. At the end of two years, I

left my birthland for the

diaspora. A few years into my

teens, when my parents could

afford it, they brought an

upright piano into the

house—I never played it.

A few years after college

graduation when I was barely

making my rent, my parents

sent me that piano as the only

piano I could afford—I never

played it. Decades later, my

husband ordered a grand

piano for our living room. My

fingers strolled through its

keys to make my husband

happy but, swiftly, I came

never to play it again. But I do

cherish this figurine of cats on

a piano which I discovered

within my mom’s things after

she died. Its innocence

reminds me of when, once, I

was so happy playing the

piano that I quickly became

proficient enough in a year to

present music during a recital

at the local university

auditorium. People dressed up

in their finest clothes to see

me and hear me. People put

on their “Sunday Best” to see

me—

to see me

to listen to me, to applaud me

with so much generosity it’s

almost unbearable today to recall

their wide smiles and clapping

hands because I was Home.

Eileen R. Tabios