The summer was full of
goodbyes. Goodbyes to a home, friends, a
boyfriend and a grandfather. Hello to a
new city and state, a school and a church full of people yet to become friends –
all because of a new job. My family was
all together but a good time was not being had by every single person. Although
people were reaching out, friendships take time. From the beginning, we were warmly welcomed
into a loving church as if we were long lost cousins. And in the South, we aren’t always warm or
welcoming. We’d barely unpacked and my
mother asked a new friend about a good piano teacher. You never know when these things happen that
it will be a life-changing event. But Margaret
Ruth Ransom would forever change my everyday existence.
At fifteen, I could tell this woman was special. I had never known anyone with two pianos in
the same room. I do remember my first
lesson. Shaded by a tall magnolia tree,
the white frame house was a few empty lots away from the newest highway, which
was heard but not seen as it coursed deeply through the middle of
downtown. Painted and lovingly tended,
her birthplace stood out among houses that had passed glory long before the
highway was even mapped. Walking from
the bright fall sun into the dim front hall, one was startled by a pair of large
brass Vietnamese candlesticks acting as sentries. On a sofa next to the only lamp, students
waited for their lessons as their eyes adjusted to the shadows.
The opening of the
sliding panel doors signaled one lesson was over and the next student jumped up
quickly, hurrying into the parlor, closing the doors behind her. The sunny front parlor was a shocking
contrast to a new student, who was still adjusting to the dark hall and the
mysterious candlesticks. A Chickering grand
piano stood in one corner of the room, next to the eastern window. An upright piano stood several feet from the
grand but was on the same wall. Light
and music seemed to always fill the front room.
And so I began my lessons with the new teacher in my new town.
Right away, Mrs. Ransom
gave me the goal of playing in the National Piano Guild in the spring, a competition
with just the judge, the piano and me.
At my level, there were nine classical pieces of music to memorize, each
with appropriately keyed scales. The
preparation and the participation in the Guild remains my most nerve-wracking
experience.
During the months leading up to Guild, Mrs. Ransom and I
would struggle with each new piece, my fingers slowly learning their place on
every key, plodding to learn each step in a path that soon would be just
pebbles for me to skip down perfectly.
By spring, I would lay awake at night, reviewing the sheet music in my
head. The afternoon of my first guild
arrived. A missing judge delayed my
session. In my nervousness, I confessed to
Mrs. Ransom that I hadn’t eaten lunch. I
was amazed to watch my strict teacher fly into action, presenting me with a
chicken breast sandwich on bread and butter, salted and peppered. That sandwich saved my day and was one of the
best I’ve ever had. And I saw my teacher
in a totally new way.
At my age, she had been a virtuoso, performing concertos in
major cities throughout the country. Piano
had always been her life. While she connected
with young people, she could hardly imagine anything more important than the piano.
I should have practiced more. My extra-curricular school activities did not
make her happy. She did not think I
should edit my high school newspaper or dance in the school play. My fingernails were seldom short enough. I tried to practice enough because I wanted
to make her happy. She did appreciate my
little bit of talent. Many a lesson she
stood by my side, singing the timing of a phrase, or she would sit down at the
other piano and play right along with me, hard pieces to me but she played
without the music. She was strict but
also praising.
Before my senior year of school, she was diagnosed with
cancer. I took a flower to her in the
hospital, a brave thing for a seventeen year old to do. After just two years, we had developed a
special bond. After the diagnosis, she
could keep only a handful of students. She
offered to help me prepare for a senior recital but I knew it would be too much. I was happy just to have her, once a week
with two keyboards. Being a very private
person, she never discussed her illness.
A week before I left for college, I took her to lunch at a
tea room, finishing with a showing of exquisite Faberge Eggs, just a little
gift for all she had given me. The
thrill of trills in Paderewski, the drama of “Moonlight Sonata”, the showy “Malaguena”
and a glimpse of Rachmaninoff. She had
filled my head with thousands of instructions.
More than thirty years later the notes learned in slow precision would
come back to my fingers, with practice.
To be her pupil was an honor of my young life.
By my sophomore year of college, I was once again “taking
piano” through the instruction of a music professor. Striving to be better was not enhanced by
this teacher’s emphatic shock that “You have been a pupil of Margaret Ruth
Ransom?!” Afterwards, I sought solace in
a small practice room where I could play the piano for as long as I
wanted. Piano keys and paper and pen had been my
pressure reliever for many years. I put
a piece of sheet music up on the stand and began to play. I turned the page, still playing. Suddenly I stopped. Penciled in her unique handwriting, Mrs. Ransom
had written in the margin, “memorize by December 10.” Today was December 10, but two years
later. Tears came to my eyes. She had been dead almost a year. She had spent her last year teaching me. I was good, (not a prodigy) good enough for Margaret
Ruth Ransom and she took the time to give.
A deadly tornado blew
through downtown one January evening. Mrs.
Ransom’s former home was near ground zero.
The next day, with a police officer’s permission, my daughter and I
walked down the barricaded street, unsure of what we would find. I will never forget the eerie quiet in the
middle of a sunny day.
At first I thought all
was well, until I spotted the totally de-leafed Magnolia tree. The trunk was like a stick in the
ground. The front porch was a little
crooked. Going around to the east side
of the house, to the window I had gazed from while sitting at the grand, I was
barely tall enough to look in.
Standing on old
foundation blocks and with a tight grip on the window sill, my heart
dropped. Nothing could fix the upheaval
left in the storm’s aftermath. The crooked
rooms were still standing, but mocking any hope for repairs. I cried for the ruin of her home, which had
stood proudly for more than ninety years, unscathed by “progress” or
deterioration. One of my favorite rooms
in any home was now empty. Plenty of
sunshine filled the parlor, but the music had been stripped from this room like
the leaves ripped from the front tree.
The pianos had been scattered many years before, after her son
moved. I cried for my regret at not
seeking out their destination. I stood
there and cried because I wanted someone to know a special person had made this
house alive. Sad and happy tears because
death and a storm could never take away the memory of a music teacher and four
talented hands playing as one, in the sunny parlor full of two pianos.
signed,
a woman waiting "in line" during the Symphony intermission behind (of all people) the lovely music professor full of gushing praise over my piano skills. She didn't recognize me and I didn't renew our old friendship. Really happened. Fall 2012
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