Growing up, there
were a lot of rules in the Harrison household.
We could only eat “cold” cereal on the weekends, and even then only
before 9am (a tactic my parents used to get us out of bed on the weekends),
there was absolutely no TV allowed during the week, and only a specific
allotment of time for TV on Friday and Saturday nights. We were only allowed to play on the computer
or play video games for an hour a day, and of course only after our homework
was completed. Also, expected each day,
every child was to practice the piano for forty-five minutes. I was in the younger portion of the family,
and the last three children were to practice an additional instrument (mine was
the cello) for thirty minutes per day.
One hour and fifteen minutes of pure torture, per day.
Did I mention I
grew up in a big family? There were twelve of us. I am number eleven; the eleventh of twelve. Now, we were all required to play the
forty-five minutes of piano as we reached middle and high school, but as
younger, elementary-school-aged children, an hour was expected of us each day
(barring Sunday, the Holy Sabbath).
In the morning, my
mother would enter each bedroom and wake up the sleeping children who occupied
each said bedroom (there were usually two, and sometimes three occupants in
each room). She would brightly sing:
Rise and shine
Get up it's mornin’ time!
Rise and shine
Get up it's mornin’ time!
Rise! And! Shine! And!
Get up it's morning time
Children
Of the
Children of the Lord
We would grumpily
roll out of bed, and when we heard the “dinner bell” (a large, brass bell that
was rung in order to call the family from all corners of the house—used for
prayer time, breakfast, dinner, and scripture reading) we would stumble into
the living room, still in our PJ’s for family prayer. And that is when the action started.
The elementary
school kids were allowed to play the piano for thirty minutes in the morning,
before school. If this was accomplished,
after school was over you would only be required to play thirty more minutes of
the hated instrument until you were free all evening! The only catch was, we
only had two pianos. There were five or
six of us at the ripe age of splitting our piano time, but only two pianos. So, in the mornin’, it was an all-out
sleep-still-in-our-eyes war for who got to play the piano.
We would position
ourselves carefully in the living room:
the grand piano was located there, and the best spot to be in the family
prayer circle was in the back of the room, nearest that piano. The older piano was downstairs, so the
planning had to be strategic—either you got the good piano upstairs, or you had
to sacrifice it to at least get one
of the pianos in the morning. A second catch: due to the battling of the
children for the pianos in the morning, it was forbidden to have your piano
books already in your hands or (God forbid) already set up on the piano, ready
to be played out of by some smartie-pants who thought ahead the night
before. So, after the bell was rung, and
the children stumbled into the living room for family prayer, things got
serious. Children pushed and shoved each
other for the coveted kneeling positions, and after the parents selected a
child to offer up the supplication to heaven we would all bow our heads, tensed
and ready to spring as soon as the prayer ended. If you were the selected orator, you had an
advantage—you got to choose when the prayer ended, and therefore you were the
most ready to run for your piano books, and subsequently, for the piano
itself. The other children were would
peek their eyes open, and gauge the other’s reactions and future moves, as well
as eyeing the prayer-giver, sizing them up and guessing what tricks they had up
their sleeve, ready to jump up as soon the word “amen” was spoken. And then, it would happen. The child would utter the trigger, “amen”, and
the living room would erupt in chaos: children
running for their books, desperately trying to be the first to get their bums
on the bench. Every morning ended in
fights, and exclamations of, “I got here first!” and “Mom! Lance cheated!” or, “Mom! Trent doesn’t even
have his books yet!!”. Often, the daily
morning battle would end in tears.
After the morning action,
everything settled down a bit. I, along with most of my siblings, objected
obstinately to practicing the piano. I
abhorred the forty-five to an hour (plus an additional thirty on the cello)
spent each day playing music. I would
often “cheat” on my time by speeding up the timer, and if I didn’t do that, I
would lie down on the piano bench and wish away the seconds. My parents were cognizant of all this
degenerate behavior, and they could be heard from distant corners of the house
hollering, “Keep going!” Sometimes, in the act of lying down, and with the
pressure of the parental need to hear music flowing from the living room, I
would attempt to pick out the tune with my toes.
I wouldn’t ever
leave the bench, though. As much as I
hated playing the thing, I couldn’t leave the thing, because I had an obligation,
and again only two pianos to accomplish this expectation on. Going to the bathroom was tricky. You had to be quiet and quick—lest a sibling
steal your piano. An empty piano bench, regardless of how much time you had
left, was fair play.
When
I was sixteen, I talked my parents into letting me quit music lessons. I never felt such relief, and such freedom
when they relented. Suddenly I had so
much extra time for activities! It wasn’t until a little later in my life that
I realized what a privilege it had been to learn to play two different
instruments, as well as to develop the skill of reading music. My parents had paid for lessons year after
year (ten), and I had squandered the opportunity. I wasn’t bad at playing the piano by any
means, I had learned to do so, and quite well, but I could have been so much better if I had just appreciated
the prospect. But such are the ways of
maturation, and the honed ability to value your parents and their attempts to
shape you into a well-developed adult that only come once you are grown.
