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Three-year-olds, Sand Pianos & Joy We Learn to Create
Yesterday, I was coerced into teaching piano lessons to a 3-year-old. It began with an innocent enough beach walk at sunset when the curly-headed toddler began to draw pictures of pianos in the sand with a stick.
Her drawings were terrible.
But we (her mother and I), tried to help her hold her stick with both hands, keeping it straight, and focus on drawing the lines just so until they connected into the likeness of a rectangular instrument.
I attempted to enhance her design by drawing a stick figure sitting atop the sand piano, legs kicking, the smile wide, and music notes circling around the head.
My drawing was just as terrible, looking more like a giant bug than a lounge singer, but whatever. We were having fun, smashing away at sandy keys, playing rock and roll tunes while the sun dipped down behind the ocean.
It was then that I was asked if I actually knew how to play the piano. For almost 9 years, my mother, who was also a piano teacher, forced me to take lessons with her after school. It was laid on pretty thick just how fortunate I was to have free access to learning a new instrument. And always, always came the threats week after week that I would be grounded for not practicing and learning the songs I was supposed to.
