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Show would let me play when she was finished, and I would pump the foot pedal feverishly to get the strongest sound, only to have it fade as quickly as it was played. Nothing held. Scott and I would flip the stops up and down, adding trumpets and violas, marimbas and basses, trying to a find a series that pleased. When we couldn't return the keys to their original positions, we were told to play outside. Still, I knew she loved music, knew it by the time she would spend at the organ or the piano, knew it in the way she asked my mother to accompany her when she visited us. On those afternoons, my mother would sit at our piano, an upright baby grand that her parents bought as a wedding present, and play while my grandmother stood beside her, one hand resting on the piano and the other on her diaphragm, singing like an opera star. Songs that I would have recognized if my mother had been singing-"Mr. Boj angles" or "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"-seemed to sprout new limbs in my grandmother's mouth, trilling and spilling and melting into one gigantic "o" of a sound, not unlike the organ. Up and down the register, she vibratoed while my mother watched for signals to pause, to turn, to begin again. Their concentration turned our family room into a performance hall; No house in the street held such sounds, and I knew not to interrupt. My legs, though, would grow tired of standing and waiting for the song to end so that I could ask for a snack or a ride to soccer practice. Or maybe it was jealousy that caused my impatience, made me sigh at the edge of the room or whine about hunger, and here, perhaps, is why the music of my mother and grandmother matter to me now, why I find myself pushing on moments that appear initially unimportant. My mother and grandmother were enjoying themselves. I could tell by the way they caught each other's eyes and scurried through the sheet music debating 146 |