Music History

I played arpeggios for Mrs. Aranda, who smelled so good and came to our house every week. Her own house had a giant blue vase on the stone front porch. I’d pass it on long walks. One time I saw her tall dark son, who had a different last name and wore black leather jackets to our school.

I learned “Stardust” by heart, and for some mysterious reason it remains in my fingers today. Everything else I played — Chopin’s Nocturne, Tschaikovsky’s Concerto in E Flat Minor, “The Poor People of Paris” — has turned to memory dust.

I hated practicing. Once, when she came for my lesson, I hid. When caught, I refused to play scales. We fought to a draw. She left; and I pined for her perfume and pretty face.

Not long after, Dad would drive my brother and me to doughty, rouge-faced Miss Gilbert’s in a drab duplex in the city. We took turns at the upright, half an hour each, while someone we never got to see shuffled in the next room, hidden by a green curtain.

I requested popular songs: when given “Theme from My Three Sons,” I played it, shameless but bored.

By the time I was twelve my folks gave up. I was free to roam baseball fields until the sun went down.

Today I tell parents of children I teach how happy I am that I learned music fundamentals as a child. And the funny thing is, it’s true.