The Organ
Sometimes I anthropomorphize objects in my life, naming my plants, my computer, and so forth. But I have never called the thing that has been with me the longest anything but what it is: the organ. It’s an old-fashioned pump organ that would fit perfectly on the stage of a late nineteenth-century drama. In fact, because both the organ and theater are important to me, my will bequeaths the organ to a Broadway prop shop.
The organ resembles a small upright piano, with one notable exception. The only way to get sound from it is to pump the pedals. Located where the pedals on a piano would be, the organ’s pedals are two broad footrests that serve as bellows to pump air through the instrument. Air passing through the reeds makes a rich, mellow sound.
For many years, the organ was silent. It was covered with papers and bits of this and that, which obscured the deep mahogany and decorative details—scrolls, scallops, little arches, and gold leaf. What a disgraceful way to treat such a gorgeous instrument, such beautiful cabinetry, something so personally meaningful!
A pump organ—not this one—first came into my life when I was twelve years old. My uncle was teaching a summer course at a nearby university, and he, my aunt, and their eight-year-old daughter rented a furnished house for the term. We visited them frequently, and it was my sisters’ and my responsibility to relieve the loneliness of my little cousin. I enjoyed playing with her, but at some point during every visit I would leave my sisters to entertain her and slip into another room where magic awaited: a pump organ. The silly little ditties I played on my family’s out-of-tune piano sounded spectacular on the instrument; at least I thought so.
One Sunday that fall, after my uncle and his family had returned home, my mother insisted that my sisters and I take a drive with her. That was highly unusual, and perhaps that’s why the day remains vivid in my mind. My mother was not an adventurous driver; my father would drive if she wanted to go somewhere out of the ordinary. He did not come this time, and I recall cowering in the back seat, afraid that my mother was taking her children on this strange outing to tell us they were splitting up.
We drove somewhere we had never been before and never should have been at the time. Somehow, my mother had managed to get on a highway that was under construction. From my position in the back seat, it seemed that the road periodically disappeared. We eventually got off this nightmare road and drove into an area of look-alike homes. My mother stopped the car and ordered us out. She led us to a house and rang the bell. “We’re here about the organ,” she told the woman who answered the door.
The woman ushered us into her home. We walked through a few nicely furnished rooms, and there it was: a pump organ, much more beautiful than the one I had enjoyed in my relatives’ rental. I could see my mother’s admiration for the rich mahogany and gold-leaf designs. She was fond of home sales and had frugally, yet tastefully, furnished our house with other people’s castoffs.
My mother told me to try out the organ, and I played softly while the adults talked. I heard the homeowner say that she was redoing her house in modern style, and this old-fashioned piece would not fit. She said we could have it for $100 if we would haul it away. My mother said she’d have to think about it, which I interpreted as the death of the deal. We left with directions to return home without getting on a road that didn’t yet officially exist.
When we came home from school a couple of weeks later, my sister stepped into the house first and said, “What’s the desk doing in the foyer?”
“My organ!” I shouted, and I ran into the living room to the place the desk should have been. Sure enough, there it was. Without taking off my coat, I started to pump and play.
I was hardly an accomplished musician. My only training on a keyboard was a year of group piano lessons in third grade. Perhaps six or eight children followed along on a paper keyboard while one youngster banged out a tune on the teacher’s piano. At the most, we each had ten minutes a week to actually make sound come from the instrument. As unsatisfying as these lessons were, I enjoyed learning to read another language—music. I was intrigued that the notations on the page produced not words, but a different kind of sound. I was glad that if I read the music correctly, the right notes would come out—unlike the off-key screech on the cello I later attempted to play.
Neither my sisters nor my parents ever expressed any desire to play the organ; it was mine whenever I wanted it. Having something like this to myself was unusual because I grew up in an era when families shared their entertainment. Most homes had only one television and one record player (music in my childhood came from big black discs put on a turntable); none of this go off to your room and listen to your own personal device. Only many years later did I realize that the organ was my mother’s gift to me and me alone. I’m not sure that was her initial intention. To her, the organ was a beautiful mahogany piece that fit the décor of her home; her taste was the opposite of the lady who wanted to get rid of the instrument because it did not work with her new interior design.
I never thought of my mother as a music lover. Nonetheless, she insisted we take those group piano lessons and attempt string instruments. Although we didn’t have money to spare, she enrolled us in a program in which we got to skip school every now and then to attend kid-friendly performances by a professional orchestra. She took us to outdoor classical concerts in the summer, which we enjoyed as much for the picnic as for the music. In my thirties, I thanked her for giving me the gift of music. I was referring to these events. I hadn’t yet realized that the organ was part of the picture.
My father liked popular music, especially show tunes. Most of my organ playing was anything but that. My father often sat on the couch near the organ while I played. I would apologize for disturbing his peace, and he would say, “You’re not bothering me. I like to hear you play.” To this day, I can’t believe he really did.
It was a given that the organ would be mine when we sold the house. That occurred many years after the organ came into our home, after first my mother and three years later my father died. I was living halfway across the country, and I hired a professional moving company that specialized in pianos. I was in my parents’ house when the movers came. Two burly men lifted the instrument and started laughing. I asked what was so funny. “We thought it would be heavy, but it doesn’t weigh anything,” one of the movers said. It had never occurred to me that a pump organ, which depends on air forced by bellows through hollow reeds, would be lightweight.
The organ made the move without incident. But I rarely played it. It’s one thing to bang out music in your family home and quite another to do so in an apartment building surrounded by neighbors who might not be as tolerant. Instead of playing the organ, I admired it as my mother had, as a beautiful piece of furniture. I’d look at it and remember my family, and I adorned it with pictures of them and knickknacks that I had taken from the house where I grew up. Over the years, though, the organ became a depository for other things: papers I didn’t want to lose, books too big for a bookshelf, and plants that preferred indirect light.
One day this past summer, I realized that almost all of my immediate neighbors were gone for at least a few weeks. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and do something that I wouldn’t ordinarily do lest I disturb people who shared the thin walls of the apartment building. Playing the organ didn’t come to mind initially. It was almost a week before I realized that this was the perfect time to clear off the instrument and see if I could still play.
I almost couldn’t at the beginning. I had forgotten how to read music after four decades when I had no reason to look at notes on a staff. Surprisingly, though, my fingers still had muscle memory. I played every day for a few weeks, assuming my time at the keyboard would end soon when my neighbors returned. They came back apartment by apartment, and I kept playing. Nobody has complained so far. I play only in the daytime, usually for just fifteen to twenty minutes; my leg muscles feel the pumping, despite the three to five miles I walk every day.
Playing the organ again has brought music back into my life. I used to hear tunes in my head when I walked. In the past five years or so, I have heard only words as I compose something I am writing. Now the words in my head often share walking time with the simple pieces I am playing on the organ. Classical music was once such an important part of my life that I thought it would be worse to lose my hearing than my eyesight. I’ll never know why I suddenly found my favorite composers irritating. Several years ago, I stopped listening to music of any kind. Then last month I sorted through some papers while Mozart played in the background. I was glad to have my old friend back.
I have no doubt that the organ will be as much a part of my daily life from now on as brushing my teeth and taking walks. I’ll never be a great musician or even a good one. But playing brings me pleasure and rekindles memories. I can’t dwell on them, because I’ll lose my place as I still struggle to figure out what note I’m staring at on the page.
I feel the organ beckoning me right now—time to play.