The Greatest Item I Own Is This Piano

So I am moving yet again.  Eighth time in ten years.  I could blog just about the stories behind that fun fact. But, I have to tell you about this piano.  When we were kids, the five of us heard story after story about the history of this piano.  It is a Wurlitzer..yep made in North Tonawanda!The story goes that  Ernie Burnette once owned it.  The song "My Melancholy Baby" was composed on it. Somehow it ended up in my mothers house when she was a little girl in Saranac Lake,NY.  My mother was so proud of this piano.  When she and my father moved into East Aurora, they had the piano shipped to their new home and it remained there for the next 25 years or so.  As kids we would play it.  Well TRY to play it.  We never did take formal lessons.  Fast forward 19 years.

My mother passed away in 1996.  Other than her family, this piano was the only thing that she called her own.  When my father became ill and we had to move him to an assisted living residence, I was given this piano.  I don't play piano.  I really have no plans of ever learning to play either.  Perhaps someday I will have kids and they may take it up.  However, that's not why I have moved it around for the better part of the last decade.   This is the single greatest item I own.  I would give up just about anything else (except my guns...those have a special meaning to).

Many times I find myself looking at that piano and getting a sense of comfort.   May sound crazy to some, but having the piano around gives me a lasting tangible connection to the greatest woman I have ever known.  It is a lasting symbol of my family's history.  I could have sold it.  Lord knows most of the places I have moved into didn't offer enough space for it.  It's been lugged in and out of moving vans, up and down stairs, in and out of apartments and houses.  Still I can't help but pay close attention when it is moved to make sure it is handled with care.