Moving Pianos

Work continues nearly every day in preparing the house on Hickory Street for an Estate Sale.  We are now planning on three weekends, beginning August 22.  We did not expect to be ready this soon and find ourselves a little surprised that it is just around the corner, ads to appear in the paper next week.

Martha has done such a good job organizing all the things to be sold and grouping them together - Christmas all on one table, silver and china on another, etc.  Angie, too, has found that she is very good at displaying the things for sale, and they have talked about how they grew up in the family "dime store" on the hill in Highlands - the Highlands Variety Store - where they learned these skills.  "That's the stool we used to take a break on," Angie told me the other day, pointing to a little wooden stool out on the front porch.  It has been a time of fond memories as these belongings have been sorted through.

Upstairs, the rooms have been mostly emptied of furniture, the mattresses and springs taken to the landfill because they cannot be sold, some of the bureaus and dressers already sold on Facebook Market Place.  I went upstairs to work on a headboard the other day, and was suddenly overcome by sadness at the silence and emptiness of these rooms.  Martha told me later that she had the same feeling, held at bay most of the time by staying so busy.

The nicest part about emptying out the house is that so many of the children and grandchildren have wanted things, ranging from small keepsakes to larger pieces of furniture; even though all of them have fully furnished houses, they have made room here and there for meaningful things.  Angie took home the pie safe that used to belong to her "Mamah," for example.  And we were so happy that our daughter Katy decided she wanted the Steinway piano that Mamah used to have in her home and on which she gave piano lessons.  

When we visited at Thanksgiving to enjoy the bountiful dinner Martha's aunt Lizette would prepare, we would stay at Mamah's big old house on Boylan Avenue and I enjoyed playing this piano, a 1951 Steinway with beautiful touch.  What wonderful memories I had, spinning out melodies in that cool house with its high ceilings.

"Did you know Mamah spent every summer in Highlands for years working on the needlepoint for the bench?" Martha told Katy.  "I think she only did it when she was visiting us.  I have always loved it."

Katy had arranged for a company called Two Men and a Truck - I have always loved that name! - to come to Highlands and pick up the piano, a cedar chest, and a freezer, and then come to our house to pick up a huge amount of her belongings that she had stored with us - her old desk and bed, a plant stand also once owned by Mamah, and boxes and bins of old books, National Geographics, stuffed animals - half a lifetime of possessions. 

The men (actually three men) showed up punctually and immediately went to work.  I have moved pianos before, including the Yamaha in our house that once belonged to my Dad, and it is not an easy task.  But in no time they had bundled it up and rolled it up the steep ramp into their truck.

I enjoy watching men work at jobs in which they excel, and this genial crew definitely knew what they were doing, from backing the truck in flawlessly at both places to expertly loading everything carefully between those thick padded moving blankets, strapping them to the walls so they would not slide around going around the switchbacks on the Walhalla Road.  I had been worried that the truck might not be large enough, but it proved to be plenty roomy enough.  "Sorry about the steps," I told one of them at our house as they were rolling big dollies from our back porch down the two steps to our narrow stone sidewalk.  "Oh, this is an easy day," he said.  "It could always be worse!"  That's a good attitude for someone in his profession.  From some dark recesses of my memory I dredged up a Laurel and Hardy short from nearly a hundred years ago.

Yes, it was an easy day, here on our flat driveway, despite two steps and a stone walkway that I built 30 years ago that should have been at least six inches wider than it is.  And in no time at all, we received a photo from Katy showing us how perfectly the piano fit in the nook of her dining room.

We have fewer possessions than many in our house, and we have always tried to live by that adage credited to William Morris: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."  (And, one might add, the memories that they hold.) Sorting through 60 years of memories has made us more conscious of our own home and possessions.  With more time at home because of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have re-evaluated a lot of them in light of our own mortality.  In the end, they mean nothing, except in their utility and their beauty.  What matters is the love we have for one another, our relationships, and our struggle to make things just a little better every day.