The Things We've Handed Down*

My parents recently gave us my Grandma Gregerson's piano that had been in their house since the 1970's.  My sister, Liz, was so kind to have the piano moved up from Salem to our home.  I did a bit of research into the piano to find out more about it's history.

It's a Steinbach and Dreher upright piano.  Steinbach and Dreher was a small, family owned firm that built pianos in very small numbers. Their factories were in Rockford, IL (Chicago).  The piano was built circa about 1915 and is made of Honduran Mahogany wood.

I love the delicate ornate features on the sides of the piano.

While this is the factual history of the piano, there is much more to it than that.  This piano has a sentimental history. 

My mother was born in 1933.  My grandmother Margaret became ill with some complications from the delivery and had some significant postpartum depression.  She ended up moving to Portland to live with her sister for a year to recover.  My grandfather hired someone to help care for my mother and her older brother during this time.  I can only imagine how stressful a time that must have been for my grandfather.  He had a young son, a newborn, a full time job as a mechanic and the Great Depression had hit.  After Margaret recovered, she returned to Boise.  My grandfather bought her this piano to help raise her spirits.  We speculate that he must have bought it from someone who needed the money as times were hard then.  A purchase like this must have been a big deal for them given the time and circumstances. 

Margaret played the piano beautifully.  She could play by ear as well as read music, which was evident from the large stack of sheet music that arrived with the piano.  Margaret came to live with us after she had a stroke in 1978.  While many of her abilities were affected by the stroke, her ability to play the piano was not.  I got the feeling that the piano still brought her comfort even after all those years. 

Rudolph (Rudd) and Margaret Gregerson
Newlyweds in Yellowstone Park 1925

Rudolph and Margaret Gregerson
Pasadena, CA 1926

I took piano lessons for 11 years and played on this beautiful old piano.  It's been enjoyable to revisit some of those pieces I worked so hard to master as a young person.  I'm amazed at how some of it just comes back more easily if I don't think about it than if I do - in a funny sense memory kind of way.  My daughter seems to have an aptitude for music.  She sits down and figures out tunes that she knows and plunks them out on the piano.  Hopefully we'll soon have her in some lessons so that she can learn more.  I'd like to think that there is a little bit of her great grandmother's gift in her.  "The things we've handed down*" - both literally and figuratively.

My sister, Jean, wrote an interesting story about my grandparents and how they met at Yellowstone Park in the 1920's.  I took the images I used above from her story.   I'm looking forward to taking my kids to Yellowstone Park sometime soon.  I think must be a magical place for our family.

*One of my favorite songs from the soulful Marc Cohn

LYRICS: THE THINGS WE'VE HANDED DOWN

(Marc Cohn)

I don't know much about you
I don't know who you are
We been doing fine without you
But we could only go so far
Don't know why you chose us
Were you watching from above?
Is there someone there that knows us
Said we’d give you all our love
Will you laugh just like your mother
Will you sigh like your old man
Will some things skip a generation?
Like I’ve heard they often can
Are you a poet or a dancer?
A devil or clown
Or a strange new combination
Of the things we've handed down
I wonder who you look like
Will your hair fall down in curls
Will you be mama's boy
Or daddy's little girl
Will you be a sad reminder
Of what's been lost along the way
Maybe you can help me find her
In the things you do and say
And these things we have given you
They are not so easily found
Oh, but you can thank us later
For the things we've handed down
(Things we've handed down)
You may not always be so grateful
For the way that you were made
Maybe some feature of your father's
That you'd gladly sell or trade
And one day you may look at us
And say that you were cursed
But all the time that line has been
Extremely well rehearsed
By our fathers and their fathers
In some old and distant town
From places no one here remembers
Come the things we've handed down
The things we've handed down
The things we’ve handed down

Don't Embarrass Me Mom!

For the last 17 years I've had the tradition of going to see Stars On Ice with my sister Jean. We've had our our daughters join us once they became old enough. Jean and her daughter, Annie, are arriving by train late tonight for our annual skating weekend. In the past the shows on the west coast have always been in January. They changed things up this year. We're very excited to see them and to see the show, of course.

Jean is a great writer, so after our antics at last year's show I told her she had to write about it. We had great fun - likely not to be topped again at this year's show, so I decided to post this in honor of our Girl's Weekend. It still cracks me up when I read it. We weren't to sure what to do with the sweaty towel, so we framed it up with tickets stubs, a copy of the story and a program from that night. It's hanging in my playroom for now. I think people might think I'm a little weird for putting that on the wall. Frankly, I'm not sure what else you do with a sweaty autographed towel!

********************************************************************************

Don’t Embarrass Me, Mom
January 2009

Ten years ago, I took a solitary intermission in Sacramento’s Arco Arena to pre-empt the serpentine ladies’ room lines. When I returned to my seat, Annie cried, “Oh, you missed it, Mom!” A woman next to my little sister Melanie said, “I can’t believe he just did that to you!”
The cause for this disbelief? A small and mighty Russian ice dancer had caught Melanie’s eye, climbed several rows to our corner seats and asked “what’s your name?”

"Melanie,” she answered.

“Don’t worry Melanie,” Gorsha Sur assured in his thick accent, “I won’t drop you.” And with that he dipped her in a romance-novel worthy swoon. Nothing so awesome had ever happened to us at our six previous years at the Stars on Ice show. And I’d been in the bathroom.

Ever since Melanie first told me about Stars on Ice sixteen years ago, we’ve made it our annual tradition. Stars on Ice features creative music, themes, costumes and innovative choreography for the non-Kindergarten crowd. They group skaters in unexpected and delightful ways. The smallish, tightly bonded cast clearly likes one other.

Melanie and I consider Stars on Ice a vehicle to feed our sisterly bond. We’ve attended the show in Seattle and Sacramento and back to Seattle, tracing Mel and Bill’s moves. The Portland show is closer to my Salem home, but I use trains, planes and automobiles to watch it wherever Mel and family reside.

I started inviting my Annie along when she hit middle school—around the time of the Gorsha Sur swoon. We decided to increase our chances of skater interactions by investing in closer seats. That’s how we scored some front row fun: Scott Hamilton spraying Melanie with ice after a too-sudden stop; Kurt Browning growling at Annie during a panty-tossing Tom Jones tune. (I hate the word “panty” but underwear just doesn’t work here.)

Last year we sat in the front row at the far end of the rink. During a group number, I chair-danced to the beat, pumping my arms overhead. Ilia Kulik noticed and mimicked my motions. Annie was mortified.

This year we sat front row center in Seattle’s Key Arena. Mel expanded our tradition by inviting her daughter Suzanne. At intermission Suzanne switched places with me so she could sit next to Annie. This allowed Mel and me better opportunity to whisper and make trouble during the show. “Don’t embarrass me, Mom,” Annie warned, recalling my Ilia Kulik chair-dance. Foolishly, she underestimated the possibilities of our new seating arrangement.

The second half of the show began with a testosterone group number. Imagine six guys wearing purple sleeveless spandex shirts and black leather pants with silver studded “W’s” on their pockets. Six studs with studs. They gyrated in mock Chippendale fashion to a Bon Jovi song called “We Got It Going On.”

“We should wave money at ‘em,” Melanie jokingly suggested. To her surprise, I went for my purse. I was in. But I had only tens and twenties; it seemed excessive for our purposes

“Got any ones?” I asked. Mel found some and passed me a bill.

“Fold it like this,” she instructed, doubling it lengthwise. Mel seemed to know a lot about waving money for Chippendales, I thought. In truth, our Chippendale expertise came almost entirely from that old Chris Farley/Patrick Swayze Saturday Night Live skit.

We waved our ones and the skaters began to notice and laugh. Annie tried snatching my dollar but I held tight. Near the end of the song Michael Weiss passed while heading for the chorus-line finale. “Michael, come here!” Melanie barked.

Over 10,000 fans followed Michael and his spotlight as he skated to Melanie and me. Before us stood Michael Weiss, a man universally known as a devoted daddy and husband. Suddenly a frontal dollar stuffing seemed all sorts of wrong. But Mel knew just what to do. “Turn around,” she ordered. Michael obeyed.

Melanie tucked her dollar into Michael’s silver-studded pocket and I poked mine into his belt. Michael skated away with our dollars flapping behind from his behind. The other guys looked puzzled by Michael’s delay. When Michael reached them, he grabbed our dollar tips and waved them around. The guys roared and offered knuckle-fisted high-fives.

Mel flushed scarlet and suffered a thumping heart. I suffered less post-traumatic-Chippendale syndrome, probably because everything had largely been Melanie’s initiative. I just reached for some Malt Balls and enjoyed the show. But my time was coming.

A few songs later, Michael delivered a high-energy interpretation of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.” We got close-up displays of his handstands, flips and rocker scowls. Afterwards Yuka Sato and John Zimmerman handed Michael a towel to wipe away his sweat, and they dabbed each other with it. John, Yuka and Michael looked to the crowd and asked who wanted the sweaty cloth. “Who wants it most? Who’s the greatest fan?”

The three rounded the rink before John approached, grinning. He pointed to us and yelled, “You!” Michael carried the towel over, ready to deliver. But he stopped short.

“Just a second,” he said, tucking the towel into the back of his belt. He turned around and jutted his studly-W toward us in a non-verbal, “I dare ya.” Mel momentarily froze, so I pulled the sweaty towel from his pants. Michael turned, laughed, and opened his arms wide. We did the sweaty hug and then he was gone.

I wasn’t sure what to do next with the spotlight still on me, so I twirled the towel over my head. I turned to the thousands in the stands behind me, lassoing the towel and rotating my hips in unison. Some primal instinct had overtaken me. But the crowd behind didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm, so I sat down. This time I was the one with the thumping heart.

During the next number, we examined the sweaty towel, each taking a good sniff. Besides the stink, it contained make-up and the signatures of all the Stars on Ice cast members. We’ll frame it and pass it back and forth, we decided--once the odor dissipates.

After the show, we spotted some fans loitering near the skater’s buses, eager for autographs and photos. John Zimmerman posed with us and our towel. “Michael loved it,” he reported. “You made his evening. Plus he got two dollars.” We’d hoped Michael enjoyed our antics and were relieved for the confirmation. We’d understood their Chippendales joke and they understood ours. Somehow, middle-aged moms tucking dollars into the pants of a faithful family man meant nothing more than innocent fun. Thankfully, everyone got it.

Both of our girls wanted to be the ones to tell the story to their daddies. Oddly enough, neither of our husbands seemed surprised. “Sounds like Mom’s being an introvert again,” Jim said.

Suzanne described our experience to Bill like this: “Mom and Aunt Jean stuck money in a skater man’s pants at the ice show and then got his sweaty towel.” Bill laughed, “Oh, really?”

Mel and I couldn’t have done this a decade ago. Such freedom only comes with age—the older, the bolder, we say. You care less about what people think, or even what 10,000 people think. The threshold of embarrassment rises. So when you spot that little piece of harmless wonder, or that sweaty skater towel, you can grab hold without hesitation.

Annie hates to admit it, but she loved what happened. Still, she’ll probably try to separate Mel and me during next year’s Stars on Ice. I can promise nothing.