Full Circle

We sit on the piano bench, Angela and I.  She has been my surrogate niece (along with her four siblings) for at least five years now, neighbors-turned-family.  She’s been my piano student for about six months.  Seven-year-old Grace looks over our shoulders as we play a duet, “O Come All Ye Faithful”.

“It’s just sticks and dots. How can you read that?” asks Grace.

I am five, and sitting next to my Aunt June on the piano bench.  Her old black upright has always fascinated me.  She is playing “Jingle Bells” and I’m looking from the page to her hands and back again.  Sticks and dots…what possible relationship exists between those shapes and the black and white keys?  How does she make such wonderful sounds?  I want to learn…

It is a strange sensation, not quite deja-vu. As if a cog had slipped into place after forty years.  And someday Grace will play a carol, by the twinkling lights of a holiday tree, and a little girl will stare in wonder at the music…