About seven years ago, my mother moved out of the house we grew up in. The piano, along with so many other things, didn’t make the cut. In the October issue of Real Simple Magazine, Lee Woodruff , author of Those We Love Most, writes about the decision she and her husband made in 2007 to purge her home of old furniture and other “clutter” in an attempt to streamline and simplify their lives. “In the two years since we moved into the new house,” Woodruff writes, “I’ve found myself cataloguing the missing items in my head.”
The lesson Woodruff learned too late is that some things are really worth keeping. Prized furniture from your grandmother, knick-knacks from one’s family travels. When my mother moved out of our house, I told her not to bother keeping the sewing table I bought in Knoxville, TN, for the first apartment I furnished myself. The table needed some TLC, and it didn’t seem worth the trouble to transport it. Now that I live in a house big enough to store it, I wish I’d insisted on keeping that table. I also told her that none of us was going to play the piano–the one on which my sister and I had learned to play (as it turned out, my sister had a knack for it; I didn’t), the piano at which our mother would sit sometimes in the evening and play the old hymns she’d played at her church in rural Mississippi as a teenager.
The piano needed work to be back to its former glory, so we all agreed she could let go of it. I didn’t consider that I might one day have a child who would learn piano; I didn’t think about the joy that solid musical instrument might bring to my home, the delight of seeing him play on the same piano on which I had learned (or tried to learn) decades ago. I didn’t think about the history we’d be letting go of when we said goodbye to our piano.
Some things–like that old sewing table–can be brought back to life with just a little sanding and paint. Others, of course, require more finesse. If you have a piano that’s been in your family for a while, consider its value, in both emotional and fiscal terms, before giving it up. In particular, Steinway pianos, like that great original Eames chair or your great aunt’s pearls, are worth saving–not only because of the sentimental value, but also because they tend to appreciate in value over time. A Steinway piano restoration can include refinishing, as well as replacement of broken parts with original Steinway parts (think the big items, like soudboard and keyboard)–so that the piano sounds just as good today as it did when your mother or grandmother was playing it decades ago.