Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
We’re moving soon and it’s been suggested that I might want to sell my Grandmothers piano. I have very mixed feelings about this. I only got up to first grade though I guess I could have gone further but there were other things happening in my life like coming out and puberty and acting and singing and being bullied and my parents divorcing and look at all the excuses I’m making even now. I think I just wanted to be able to play and not have to do the practice.
Anyway, the piano has a lot of sentimental value and it’s more a decoration these days. I don’t play though in the back of my mind I will start lessons again some time and be able to play a whole piece of music. Mum was the pianist but she hasn’t played for years – besides, the piano is at my house, not hers.
I don’t know why I’m keeping hold of it but I just can’t bring myself to sell it. It’s always been there and it feels like I’d be selling a part of my life or family. There’s other furniture I will sell – I don’t need DVD or CD storage cabinets because it’s all ripped to a hard drive and I don’t need the coffee table in the shed. It’s actually a decision I don’t want to make and would be relieved if it was taken out of my hands. I kind of want the permission from Mum to sell it but then I also want her to be adamantly against the idea.
I know what the ever practical original owner, Gran, would say – it’s time to let it go.
It’s just stuff and it’s not going to change the world or cure cancer but it’s also a little piece of my family and history and once it’s gone I’ll never be able to get it back. Some decisions are easy, but some are really hard – and this is one of them.
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