Playing Piano With Grandmother In The Rain

As a child and youth – even later in life – when visiting my maternal grandmother, I would often play her baby grand piano.

As a child, when a summer thunderstorm would approach, she would tell me to stop playing, because, as she said, lightning would strike the piano because of the metal wires in it. She falsely supposed it to be an attractive force of some type.

Of course, at the time, I thought such an idea to be preposterously absurd… and still do. And in retrospect, I saw my obedience, then rebellion, and later obsequiousness, more as a reflection of my love to, and respect for her.

Naturally, as a youth, I attempted to reason with her by asking her if she’d ever heard of, or knew anyone who’d ever had their piano struck by lightning while being played during a thunderstorm, and she said “no.”

Therefore, I felt as if I had been justified by anecdotal observation, and as if my rebellion as a mid-aged youth was legitimized.

As an older youth in my late teens, and early 20’s, I acquiesced to her request without protestation.

My obedience wasn’t so much for the preposterous absurdity of her fallacious and misguided notion, as much as it was a demonstration of my respect to and for her – even though it was unquestionably known that I found her fear unfounded and scientifically misguided. It was because I valued my relationship with her more than scientific fact.

I loved her.

Love never insists upon it’s own way.

Love gives way.

As the Pauline epistle puts it, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”

Grandmother has long since been dead from breast cancer which, even after a double radical mastectomy, metastasized to her brain and claimed her life. And though I continue to play piano during thunderstorms, I shall never forget how much love she gave me, and how much love she taught me.