Music

Last night I accompanied on the piano two woman singing at our Relief Society meeting.  Our ward does their Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner early so that more people can come.  The woman sang beautiful and it was fun to play for someone again.  I sat down and my thoughts drifted from the next speaker to how grateful I am for musical talent.  It really has blessed my life immensly. 

Which then made me think of my wonderful parents and all the sacrifices they made to pay for and take me to lessons.  All the hours my mom spent driving me to and from, along with my sisters, adds up to LOTS of time!  And let's not forget when I was younger and first starting lessons that my mom was my teacher!  So, lots of time and energy spent sitting next to me teaching me the notes and helping me understand what I was doing. 

And now in hindsight, I am thankful for all the drama my mom had to go through to get me to even sit and practice.  Now, I don't nessecarily think I am overly grateful to my mom to humming the correct note to me EVERY time I messed up!  Right, MOM!!  Urrgghh, that bugged!  But, I guess it in a way has helped me to be able to pick out notes better while sightreading music while singing. =)

My mom was the driving factor behind us kids learning to sing and play and instrument.  My dad loved us doing it and was glad to pay for it, but it was my mom who had to do all the shuttling around and reminders to practice.  I am thankful for my mom and for the influence her musical abilities has been on my life. 

I am grateful for all the piano teachers I have had, yes, even my mom.  My favorite piano teacher would definetely be Sandy Beck, my wonderful friend, Heidi's mom.  She is such a sweet and caring lady and I loved taking lessons from her.  My sisters and I took lessons from Sandy, and her kids took from my mom. Which worked out perfect because while the other siblings were doing their lessons, we would get to go play up in Heidi's room!  Barbies, Barbies, Barbies!!  Heidi had ALL the Barbie stuff, or so it seemed!  The Barbie house, the Barbie car, tons of clothes, Ken dolls!  All the stuff we dreamed of having!  We wouldn't want to go down for lessons because we were having too much fun!  Thanks for sharing all your Barbies and toys, Heidi!! 

Lastly, I am grateful that one of my callings at church is the ward organist.  That was a scary proposition when they asked me since I had never touched the thing before!  I think it is a lot different than the piano.  I still don't know how to do the foot pedals, and maybe someday I will figure that out.  I was pretty nervous to play at first and believe me, there were many songs that sounded pretty strange for those singing!  Let's just say, you have to make sure you are playing in the right key signature...not the key signature of the last song you just played!  =)  But I KNEW that Heavenly Father would help me learn to play the organ because He wasn't going to want me to totally bomb it every week and totally drive the Spirit from the meeting.  He has helped me learn the organ and has never let me bomb it so bad that I wanted to run out of the chapel in tears...almost a couple times....but it ended up being ok. 

So, I am thankful for being able to play the piano and also carry a tune vocally.  While I am far from anything awesome in either, it is nice to pull out of my back pocket when needed.  I am grateful for it!