Taking piano lessons from a daughter ~ June 3, 1993

David Heiller

“Sounds good, Mollie.” I can say that in all honesty because I’m the father of a girl who is learning to play the piano.

OK, so it’s not a real piano. We’re still looking for one of those. It’s an electronic keyboard, the kind that can make all kinds of fake noises. Right now she is switching from the sound of a Star Wars handgun to something you might hear in the background of a Stephen King movie.

Mozart she ain’t. But she’s already way past me in her piano-lesson knowledge. She just proved that to me. I asked her which songs she liked the best.

“I have two favorite ones. I don’t know which one I like the best. I like The Butterfly and Bluebells of Scotland.”

Why? “For one thing, this one has two of these ones that go together. Two and five and one, you push them together and four and two, you push them together.”

She made a chord to show me what she meant. “Five one, four two,” she sang. “Two of them go together, like that. You get it now? It’s like that three and one, except that it’s five and one and four and two.”

Practicing Christmas songs.

Have you ever been lectured by a seven year old? It’s a humbling experience. But I can take it, if she keeps playing the piano.

The other night I went to get milk, and I heard Mollie practicing her songs. The notes filtered down from her bedroom window in the evening like the singing of an oriole. When I got home—half an hour later, she was still playing. I looked up and smiled. It was even better than a bird song.

Cindy works with Mollie on her lessons. One evening she put me in charge. “Make sure she bends her fingers like this,” Cindy said, threatening me with a claw-like hand. “And she should be hitting the half note for two counts.” She started to go on, but my eyes had glazed over, so she didn’t bother.

I did sit on her bed and watch and listen and say nice things. I guess that’s important too.

Lately, Mollie has been having trouble with Bluebells of Scotland, so a grown-up friend stopped over on Sunday evening and spent half an hour with her on it.

“She pointed to the notes and then I did it,” Mollie told me. She demonstrated it for me. It sounded hard, but she played it well. Like I said at the start, it sounds good to me.

Friends like that, and Mollie’s good teacher, make me think that my daughter will stick with the piano. She’s been at it for a whole six weeks.

Most of my brothers and sisters can play the piano, and I envy that. I took lessons from my sister Mary Ellen for about two days when I was a kid, but it didn’t interest me. Maybe that’s because my sister was teaching me.

David always was making music.
Not 'knowing' how didn't stop him from playing the
organ at the old Brownsville school. He did just fine.

Danny and I used to tease my sisters when they would play. We had a cat named Lionel who would occasionally walk across the piano keys, making a ragged sound, and we would yell at the cat to get off. So when my sisters would practice the piano, we would yell “Lionel!” They didn’t appreciate it. Neither did the cat.

(We now have a cat named Emma, and if I ever hear Noah yell her name while Mollie is practicing, he’ll be in his room for a week.)

Now I wish I had practiced more and smarted off less. Then I could teach Mollie a few things, instead of the other way around.

I wonder where she will end up with the piano. Maybe she’ll play like Joy Novak, or Birdie Storebo, two people who can play just about any song by ear. I’d like that. These two people live up to their names. How much joy has Joy brought with her piano playing? And if Birdie doesn’t sound like a birdie when she plays, no one does.

Maybe she’ll play like her teacher, Pepper, who Mollie loves because she smiles and laughs and she’s cute. I’d like that too.

Or maybe Mollie will sit down in front of a class of first graders and play “The Marvelous Toy” and a million other songs, like Jeannie Mach. I’d like that very much.

Even if she doesn’t reach such piano pinnacles, I’ll be happy. She just brought me a picture of two axes, done like a shield of arms in colored marker. It is signed “I love you Dad, love Mollie.” On the other side of the paper are the words and music of one of her first songs. It’s my favorite, because it is called “Baseball Days,” and I am a baseball fan, and she knows it. It goes like this: “Come on boys, join the fun, baseball days have begun.”

I’d play it for you on the piano if I could, but I can’t. Guess I’ll just ask Mollie.