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| ... about 1947 ... |
My first piano lessons on it were given by Mrs. Ione Wood. I took the bus to her home and back.
One day when I was going home, I discovered I had lost my second bus ticket.
She lived in the North East and I had no idea how to walk home from there.
I went through my options. I may have been embarrassed about losing the ticket. For sure, I didn’t even think to go back to Mrs. Wood’s house and have her call my mother to come and get me. Not did I have the courage to ask her to lend me money for a ticket.
After thinking of no other option, I found a brown leaf on the ground, ripped it up to the size of a bus ticket, and when the bus came, I put it into the fare box. That was my first attempt at deception.
The bus driver didn’t call me on it.
I used to look Mrs. Wood’s her hands on the keyboard. Her nails were painted red, something my father never approved of in our house. I sort of liked the idea, but knew I couldn't pull that off at home. Mrs. Wood seemed very old. The skin on her hands was translucent and blue veins pulsed above the skin, a mass of interconnected lines running from her wrists to her knuckles. I remember hoping that I would never get so old that my hands would look like that.
Arta
"Well, I'm glad it happened in the fall," Joaquim.
ReplyDeleteI did spend a lot of time looking for a leaf that matched the colour of the bus tickets. I had forgotten that the tickets were different colours, ie for adults and for children. I wonder often if the bus driver saw me and just let it go. I can't imagine that he didn't have his eye on that fare box.
ReplyDeleteJoaquim suggests it was your first environmental action of composting.
ReplyDeleteOr we could call it my first act of repurposing an object.
ReplyDeleteNow my life makes sense. You put me on the bus to go to my first piano lesson too with Shauna ?. I was terrified. I think you told me where to get off, but I remember having no idea what I was supposed to do. I worried the entire trip. I made it there and back, although have no memory of the lesson or coming home, just of the intense anxiety I felt about possibly getting lost. And thus began many bus trips to piano lessons. Those with Madame Sziliga were interesting. I once "forgot" a piece of music at her house on purpose since I just couldn't bear to practise it. Thought if I left it there I could have a week off, with reason. She called me on it the next week. Man, she wasn't 5 feet tall, to my 6 foot frame, but she scared the pants off me. I think I need to write an entire blog post on her.
ReplyDelete