[ WP ] Tug at my heartstrings . Make me cry .

You want sad? Well... I ca n't say that YOU will find this sad, but I do. This is a true story told to me by my mother when I got ready to go out and make my way into the World. 
 
 
 My Mom was born in the 40's, the third child and only daughter to my grandparents. They were working-class and poor - my grandmother had a full-time job, back in a time when a woman was supposed to be at home, cooking and cleaning and keeping a watchful eye on her children. Part of how you knew they were poor was the fact that they lived in an integrated neighborhood. Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites all together in an age when money meant White Folk could live somewhere a little nicer than others. 
 
 This is n't to say that they went without - there were always new clothes each Fall, and plenty to eat at meals. One area where they were rich was music. They had met each other at the local radio station - he was the guitar player and singer in a bluegrass band, she was the dobro player they borrowed from another group when their own fell ill from food poisoning. She made him chase her, but in the end he won her heart. Anyway, even if money was tight there was always something for music. 
 
 My Mom was born with a talent - a real talent. She taught herself to play the piano and by age 7 had worn out the `` junk yard heap'' my grandfather had found sitting on the curb in a much nicer neighborhood. Classical, gospel, blues, country - whatever she heard she would play - and not just the stilted, choppy fingering of a child but the smooth and graceful playing of a master, as if she had written it herself. 
 
 Despite her talent, she grew up in a shadow. Her older brother had been born with a twin. Due to the drunken clumsiness of a country doctor, the twin had been dropped shortly after birth and as a result died a few days later. It was an event that scarred my grandmother so deeply that in her later days, when Alzheimer's had removed all vestiges of her self, she would still cry over her lost child and tell us again and again how the doctor had dropped him. She was there, feet in stirrups, exhausted from the dual birth, when he tripped over his own feet. It pains me to say it, but when I say that Mom was often an after-thought I'm downplaying things. From that day forward, my grandmother focused her life-preserving attention on the remaining twin, determined he would live. 
 
 By the time she was 16, my mother had a reputation for her musical ability. She dreamed of maybe one day making a living making music - maybe even finding fame of her own. And why not? She played every Sunday in church. Once a month her father would take her off to visit his old friends from the band and they would stay up all hours of the night playing, improvising, and sharing a love of music. It was n't uncommon for the local record company to call the house looking for her when they needed a pianist for a session. 
 It provided her with some income and opened the door to a bigger world than her little neighborhood. On her 16th birthday, my grandfather brought home a brand new piano - an extravagant gift, but one that brought so much joy. A year later, just two weeks after her 17th birthday, on her own initiative and at the urging of the `` fellas'' at the record company, she auditioned for a representative of Julliard School... and a week later was accepted. 
 
 I'd love to say that her parents were ecstatic and that she packed her bags and headed off into certain fame... but she did n't. My grandfather was worried. It was so far away, and she would be in New York City. That was no place for a young woman on her own! My grandmother scoffed that it was n't practical - after all, was n't she just going to wind up married and make babies? Why spend so much time and money? In a matter of an hour she fell from dreams of a life making music to a life of being trapped, contained in her little town. 
 
 She still owns that piano, that gift from her 16th birthday. I like to say that I `` grew up under it'' as every time she'd play I'd climb under the keyboard and press my back up against the upright. The music it made! So many songs, so many styles. It still sits in her family room, plunked at by her kids or one of her seven grandkids - several of whom have an amazing ear for music and can play a tune or two that gathers us around the piano. None of them knows the secret heartbreak that the yellowed keys and creaky bench hold. Never once has she complained about how her life has turned out. But I ca n't help but wonder, when Mom takes a break from messing around in the kitchen, or doing some craft project with the kids, and sits and plays some old song from memory, if she is n't thinking about her younger self and the dreams she had.
