My newly-tuned piano is heavenly, as is the rare treat of time with my son to listen to him playing it. With great verve and energy. That piano was handed down from my grandmother to my mother to me.
When I was a kid, the house rule was, piano practice absolutely took precedence over any TV watching. Being one of the younger children, from the time I was eleven on up I was the only one taking piano anymore. And it wasn’t exactly an instrument I could carry into a separate room and shut the door, like my sister’s flute or my brother’s violin.
So if I were mad at my siblings, I could take out my stress and vengeance, both, by practicing, like, real loud, drowning out their entertainment. And believe me, I did.
What goes around…
Three of my kids took piano lessons. (The oldest opted for oboe.) No rules about the TV, because there was no TV here, but still, there was one time about ten years ago that I called my piano technician because a key didn’t play. He came, took the lid off, and pronounced that someone had hit that one so hard as to break the hammer clean off.
I knew exactly which kid it would have been, too. So much my child. Although I should rescue him here and say the instrument was a good deal older by then and more fragile than back in the day and had suffered through two sets of moving companies since when we got it.
You should hear the kid play. He did his practicing over the years–he’s good. Music to my ears.
Mom was right: do your work, and it pays off all your life and on into the next generation.