I've learned more from my children and my grandchildren that I've ever taught them...sometimes it is a simple thing like a few hours spent with my 8 year old grandson, playing duets on my grandmother's old upright Heintzman piano. I know what he learned... he learned to play a few pieces, and can rattle them off in jig time, when asked. The cool thing is what I learned from this experience.
I learned that I'm a good teacher! Had no idea...we sat down to play for something to do, while he and I were sharing a snack and a cup of tea... the next thing we knew, we were playing duets! Me, and this 8 year old darling red-headed little boy...him plunking away on the upper end of the keyboard, while I chorded and chorded....and chorded some more, on the lower end.
"Ok, ok, ok, I got it, now, Grandma..." ...plink, ka-plink, ka-plink-plink...and we started again, running through the sequence, over and over again, while he kept insisting he's "got" it...
"See? I told you I got it!", he chortled, when he played it through from first to last, without stopping, without mistakes, for the first time.
I learned that he thinks I'm smart...he told me so! "Boy, Grandma, you can play anything!" He's easy to impress, this wunderkind of mine...small, slight shoulders hunched intently over the keyboard, a deep frown creasing his perfect face as he bit down on his bottom lip with ferocity...as if it made his playing and his remembering better...
I learned that I'm more patient this time around....and there's a smattering of guilt that I had less patience with my children, until I see it for what it is and realize that the only reason I have more patience with grandchildren, is because I don't have anything else to do with them, except have patience! Someone else, my daughter/their mother, cooks for them, cleans up after them, nurses them through pukey nights, broken bones and homework traumas...and I have nothing to do for them but have patience...how lovely! I can spend all the time, or none of the time, with them...it's at my leisure. No wonder they think I'm a great Grandma...I'm never cranky, ill-tempered, short of patience...
I learned the beauty of a simple thing like sitting at a piano with a small child, playing an old tune that my grandmother taught me, while sitting at the very same piano that he and I were using that day. Tears stung my eyes, ran down my cheeks and I wiped them away before he could see...I remembered my grandmother, sitting patiently beside me, while I struggled to learn the same sequence of melody and the same rhythm of tune...
I learned at that moment how much my grandmother loved me...as my feelings for this lovely, slight boy rolled over me...and I knew, without question, that a grandmother's love for a grandchild is one of the purest and most holy things on earth. In feeling that for my grandson, as we sat at my grandmother's piano, I also felt my grandmother's love washing over me...
I learned that no matter how much things change, the more they remain the same...we are a different grandchild and grandmother, but somehow we are one and the same as sat at this same piano a long time ago...her and me...me and him...plink, ka-plink, ka-plink-plink....
