Mom’s piano has clocked a lot of miles. Somehow, three decades ago, it picked up a love note.
The Kohler & Campbell piano first came from Granite Falls, NC in approximately 1961 then traveling across country to Southern California. Approximately 2400 miles.
Somehow it went from a retailer to the 1903 Victorian Farmhouse my parents purchased when I was in middle school. No date needs to be applied here. We can estimate about 70 miles for the journey. Then it was moved two times by my parents, from Highland to Redlands to Yucaipa CA, before I shipped it in 2020 to San Jose after my Mom passed. Clocking an additional 500 miles.
Another two moves to San Francisco and our current location in East Bay, puts the mileage for the piano at just over 3000. Close to 1000 of which was after 1995.
Somehow in the journeys after 1995, four love-related notes lodged inside the piano. Not in the piano bench, but in the inner workings.
My son opened up the piano in anticipation of a major tuning session this month and inside were the notes. Three of the cards were Valentine’s Day greetings, one from a cousin to my son, and two “from my son” to his grandparents. He would have been two at the time. The final piece was a card – a love note – my Dad wrote to my Mom in May 1995.
Note: My Mom and I had the same first name. The lovely card with red roses and a golden butterfly said:
May 14, 1995
Dear Glenna
Thank you for being the mother of our children, and my wife.
Love always,
Wally
A love note from my Dad to my Mom from 1995 was inside the well-traveled family piano! We were finding it 30 years later. I was astonished.
Not only was the note surprisingly there, the visuals of the card were symbolic for me. The red rose has been a touch stone for me for as long as I can remember. My Dad was also a gardener who used to give me bouquets of roses from his gorgeous garden. As a young adult, I finally figured out this was his love language to me. So yes – roses, particularly red ones!
Then the golden butterfly. It too carries much meaning for me. Transformation. The golden light is often attributed by mystics to our inner being. The card spoke to me on several levels.
Questions bubbled up: How did the card get there in the first place? How could it be “bundled” with three Valentines cards, typically February issue, when the card from Dad was dated May? How did it manage to stay inside the piano during thirty years of moves? Why was it “showing up” now?
The Universe speaks to us in ways uniquely suited to our understanding, one of the great mysteries and marvels of life. These mutterings can be small. They can also show up in ways beyond reproach. This was the latter. But what did it mean? What was Life communicating?
My parents were very proud when, as a single Mom, I purchased my first home. It’s been a long journey, over three decades, hundreds of miles and many career progressions, for me to rectify the short sale of that home during the Great Recession to buying another home now, this time partnering with my adult son.
Were my folks in the physical realm, they would be very proud of us. I’ve “bookended” and closed that difficult period with a new home for us. One born out of a difficult year but risen nonetheless.
One message from Life is “most definitely,” as my Dad would say, one of pride in our accomplishment, and an opportunity to be in gratitude for the fortitude our family has always shown to keep going, find the gift in the situation, and rise above the particulars.
Another message is how much my Dad loved his family. And his only grandson. I know he felt this deeply because he told me and wrote such notes. At the holidays when I miss him deeply, I’m very grateful to this reminder of his soul’s beauty and generosity.
A final message I will interpret from this gift, no matter how many miles we have traveled in life, beauty and love still exist within us. We choose to let the journey wear us down and stifle our joy, or we can choose to keep our love traveling with us, to keep it blooming, to cultivate it to fuel a purposeful life.
Closing Invitation
As the year draws to a close and winter invites us inward, may this story be a reminder to listen for what has traveled with you, quietly and faithfully, through every season of your life.
What notes of love, pride, and beauty are still resonating within you, waiting to be discovered?
In this Season of Light, you are invited to pause. To notice the love that has shaped you. To honor the journeys that have strengthened you. And to choose, again and again, to let beauty keep blooming through you.
If you feel called, I welcome you to sit with this question as the year turns: What wants to travel forward with me into the life I am becoming?
Affirmation
Love, yes Beauty, lives in me. It resides in a deep cavern of Light in my soul. It shines and blesses as I allow it to flow. In this Season of Light, I allow. I allow it to flow, with ease and grace and non-action. It flows out from me, blessing me, then blessing all around me. I connect with the Light, Love and Beauty around me simply by my awareness to do so, and my choice to turn toward it.