The piano...

The piano....

I know I have written about this before, but....

One hundred years ago, my grandmother received a piano...I just realized that yesterday as I watched a young woman play a piano similar to the one belonging to my grandmother...1918...and here it is 2018...
As far as is know, my grandmother received it as a graduation present...it moved from her family's home to her home in the foothills of California until it moved to the "new" house in the 1940's. It remained there until I inherited it in the 1980's. I think it only moved 10 or 11 times in those 100 years...each time requiring a hefty team of movers...

When we moved it in the 1980's, we joked that the accumulation of dust from 40 years of sitting in one spot would hopefully be blown out as it rode in the back of a pickup for 500 miles...

All of my growing up years, it held family pictures except at Christmas  time.
 Then my grandmother would sit an array of little houses for a Christmas scene...

I remember as a little girl my grandmother would play very rarely, otherwise it sat silent...unless my mother would play at Christmas time...

Each on my children, painfully took piano lessons using it for their torturous practice times...only one daughter lovingly continued and still continues to this day to play its ivory keys...keeping it in tune 100 years later...

If the piano could talk, I would love to hear it's tales of newly marrieds, rambunctious little boys, hard economic times, food rationing, living on ranches, a world war, aging parents, death, new homes, generations of people, various players, a man on the moon, family Christmas's and gatherings, family singings, endless practicing, and much much more ....100 years of stories...

Music has been important in my family...whether we listen to it from this older piano, or a radio, a concert, our modern devices...whatever they happen to be at the time...praise music at church or in the car...old songs, or new ones...thank YOU for giving us the gift of songs...

Praise the Lord with the harp; make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre. Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy.
Psalm 33:2-3

My heart, O God, is steadfast, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music. Awake, my soul! Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn.
Psalm 57:7-8

Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.
Psalm 95:2