Saturday Morning Child

An antique secretariat sets inside the front door where I hang my coat. I turn the corner. A teeny tiny television resides near the baby grand whose top holds fancy picture frames of loved ones and her students. Immaculate and dustless.

I close my eyes and I am there. Back in that house. My piano teacher's house.

Mrs. Matson. I never called her by her first name, Ruby, a classy lady full of piano playing talent.

Ruby Matson, photo from The Daily Plainsman, Huron South Dakota

When my mom was in the Huron Nursing Home near the end of her days, so was Mrs. Matson—only she seemed to have a bit of dementia. Such a cruel condition for a sophisticated white-haired woman who spent 68 years teaching piano.

I never knew her husband, for she was already a widow when I entered her life. She had no children of her own, but her piano students seemed to be just that—her children. I became one of them when my first piano teacher, Lillian Horn, moved out of town but had arranged for me take lessons with Mrs. Matson.

And how fortunate I was. Years before, Mom said she had tried to get my older sisters in with Mrs. Matson, but even back then, she was booked. Many times I felt out of my league surrounded by her talented students. I never realized at the time, I was slowly becoming one of them.

a recital program from spring 1982 when I was a sophomore

One was Huong Nguyen, a Vietnamese girl whose lesson was before me, and sometimes her equally talented younger sister, Trang, played after me. I loved to hear Huong play the beginning piece in Grieg's Holberg Suite. So if Mom was early or late in dropping me off or picking me up, I soaked up their incredible playing. Sometimes the schedule would change, and I then admired Heidi Krutzfeldt playing Debussy's The Sunken Cathedral. Heidi and I were duet partners for a couple years when Huron hosted a mass piano-duet concert involving more than a dozen pianos playing at once.

judge's comments about my performance at a contest during my senior year

Mrs. Matson was usually all business with little chit-chat. So I was shocked one Saturday morning after the boys' State B basketball tournament when she told me she had cheered for the Crow Creek Indians the weekend before when they were on television. Mrs. Matson—watch basketball? I was stunned.

I close my eyes, and even today, I have a hard time imagining her sitting in her fancy curved-leg high-back chair, cheering on Chuck World Turner and his feisty teammates. But she spoke enough of the game that I knew she had watched. This was in 1982 when Webster defeated the crowd favorite, Crow Creek.

Mrs. Matson had a way of doing that to me. Stunning me. Nothing shocked me more than when she placed that Grieg piece in front of me.

I earned a I+ on the piece, Praeludium.

The faith Mrs. Matson had in me to master it lead me to write the poem below in 2008 when I took part in the National Writing Project, a program for teachers to not just assign writing but to teach it.

This poem went through multiple revisions. Originally well-over 100 lines, I was forced to cut, cut, cut by the instructor and the e-anthology critiquers. It pained me, but in the end, I agreed with colleague Steve Maack, the lead instructor for our local project, who said, "Now it is a poem."

One of Ruby’s Jewels

by Melodie Harris

I’m up next. I walk to the piano

   with a half dozen books in my arms.

I see the photographs on the baby grand.

   Faces that sit, like me—

   One of Mrs. Ruby Matson’s protégés—

   A Saturday morning child, waiting to be taught.

I glance around.

The teacher has changed the knickknacks

   on the always dustless end tables.

The best China adorns

   the dining room table expecting company.

A half-written letter awaits completion

   on the open secretariat.

A mostly blackened score is placed before me.

   Grieg's Holberg Suite.

How about you? Ever been challenged to a task so difficult you could not believe you were being asked to take it on? What happened? How has someone's belief in your abilities shaped who you are?

Writer's Note: read more about the role of music in my life in the blog posts entitled Hootin' ~n~ Tootin' and Mom's Pestering Pays Off.

Mom's Pestering Pays Off

Mom never asked me if I wanted to take piano lessons. She just told me I was doing it. I grew up with musical sisters, so this was no surprise.

Practicing the piano was a daily event for me--usually after supper. I play it about every day now too as an adult. It brings stability to my psyche.

I started piano lessons in 3rd grade, the year I got eye glasses.

When I first started lessons, Mom would sit in the black swivel chair in the corner of the dining room quizzing me on the musical notes and symbols with flashcards. As I practiced, I would hear her flipping through her favorite reading materials: Good Housekeeping and The National Enquirer. She hid The Enquirer and other Hollywood gossipy magazines in the China closet.

Mom with me in front of the black chair she sat in when I practiced piano.

If I went on to a different piece too soon, I would hear, “That was not five times hands apart. Do it all again.” And I did. Probably with a roll of my eyes.

And if Mom was not in the house due to plowing up some field for Dad, my practice time was pretty short. Then the next week I would be explaining to Mom why I did not pass it at my lesson.

Oh, to be a little girl again with Mom around in her silent pride of watching me develop into something she was never given the chance to become. Mom could play a couple pieces by ear, but she could not read music, so it was important that her daughters knew how. I do not know if she had the same expectations of my brother, 20 years my senior.

Clarinet lessons at school started in 5th grade. I think I am a 6th grader in this picture.

As I grew older, my practice time increased. I had graduated from the Dozen A Day warm-up books to Hanon, a rigorous set of exercises. When I play them today, my young-girl frustration returns. My fourth fingers are still weak--especially the left one.

But Hanon enabled me to play tougher pieces. My teachers, for I only had two throughout the nine years I took lessons, were both meticulous. Maybe that is why people today call me picky.

my first piano teacher, Lillian Horn

Through their prodding, I seemed to become an accomplished pianist who earned superiors. No lower than a superior-minus one year, and on two different occasions, I earned a superior-plus. But I still do not think I am that good. I just practiced a lot.

I cannot sight read. I cannot play hymns. I cannot accompany a singer or a musician. I play only classical.

Yes, I play the scores whose pages are often blackened with more than an octave stretch, pass overs and unders, trills, and change of key. But really, I am not that good. It took me forever to learn a piece--but I did learn it.

I auditioned and earned the privilege of playing in front of my largest crowd ever: 1983 Girls' State in Mitchell, South Dakota on the campus of Dakota Wesleyan University. More about representing my high school there in future posts.

Here is the note telling my Girls' State counselor I got the nod to play.

The type of persistence piano playing teaches is like none other. See, for those who know my rat terrier nature, I blame it all on the piano. One has to be tenacious to learn Holberg Suite by Grieg. It took me two years.

Even with success, Mom would still say, “You sure didn’t practice very long. Go do it some more.” The older I got, the more audible complaining she heard. But Mom never really argued back. She was good at ignoring my whining and griping.

Then my senior year came, and she did argue back. “You’ve only got one more year. Next year, you’ll be at college." I was not even thinking of the senior recital I had earned.

Ruby Matson, my piano teacher ~ Heidi Krutzfeldt & Lisa Brisco with me at our senior recital

So, I kept on a-playing. Kept on a-whinin' too. Only now I also complained about playing the prelude at church, playing the offertory at church, playing the postlude at church, and griped that Arlene Decker and Barbara Gross, our regular pianists, wanted me to do her job.

This self-centered teenager did not understand that those women were actually complimenting me when they allowed me to play instead of them. And Mom just kept on saying, "You're not gonna quit."

I am so glad she did not let me.

And today when I can still sit down and play, rusty--really rusty, I can almost hear Mom holler from another room like she did when I was a teenager, “That sounds just beautiful, honey. Play it again.”

Thank you, Mom. It seems you and Dad gave me a name that suits.

me on my sister Brenda's lap--eyes on the keys of the piano that I first learned on

Did your parents ever make you do something you grew tired of? How do you feel about it now? Share how it has shaped who you are today by commenting below.