Gabriele O' Steinway. Yes, that's my 1922 Steinway O grand piano.
Ever since I was young, I used to declare that I would like a real piano for my 16th birthday. Beginning piano lessons, my brother and I learned to play on a keyboard. Of course, this was only real in the sense that silk flowers are living and growing. As I progressed to a serious stage in my study of piano, my teachers on all sides recommended that I purchase an acoustic instrument soon; even better, a grand.
Keeping in mind our limited money and space, my family and I explored vast seas of pianos in local showrooms, figuratively rummaged through online auctions, and told everyone we knew. Bostons, though a secondary product of their mother company Steinway and Sons, caught my eye and ear the most. Yet, not even the smallest used ones appeared feasible.
One night, I browsed more advertisements online, and saw that a mahogany Steinway O near where I lived needed a home more than a large sticker price, and I excitedly sent the page to my parents. Within the next day, we set up a visit to the owners' home.
He was a former Air Force pilot; she was a retired high-school music teacher. Both of them were preparing a move to a smaller home, and if their precious Steinway could not be adopted by another, she would need to be put in a specially conditioned warehouse for old pianos - a sort of nursing home. Maybe I could learn to love a blonde, I decided. Trying to remember something from the WTC, I admired the deep, glassy sound, and the deed was done. Upon returning home, we called them, they removed the advertisement, and Gabriele would come home in two more days.
The morning they scheduled to escort her over, it rained, posing some difficulties for the transporters attempting to lift her down the nearly vertical drop of a driveway (I do not skid. Sledding there would be phenomenal). Pacing around the bare living room, I felt distressed as if there was an impending performance to happen. At last, the two movers made a entrance.
"Where do you want it?" I pointed. Deftly and smoothly, they carried in the soundboard and separate legs and bench, promptly assembled the dismembered instrument, and tipped here upright in what seemed like under a minute. "There you go. Have a great day." Then, they left.
Suddenly, I felt angry. Maybe I really didn't want the piano, but there she stood. Too overwhelmed to speak or play anything, I shut myself in my room and cried relentlessly for an hour or two.
Imagine daydreaming about tasting chocolate your whole life, and then one day someone placing a truffle in your palm, saying "Here. This is for you - enjoy." That is precisely what it felt like. Eventually, I did calm down, and my family and I traveled out for a late lunch - a celebratory mini-torte was in order.
The lesson of the day: sometimes when you pray for a Boston, God gives a Steinway. "Pray with faith, for though He try you, no good thing can God deny you" (Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary, No. 256).
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