I’ll tell you something that I don’t talk about often.  As a child, I played the piano.  Seriously.  At the age of eight, I begged to have lessons.  By twelve, I was practicing anywhere from an hour to three hours a day, with a teacher who kept me focused on competitions and performances.  By the time I was fourteen, I could play, by memory, the same song a young pianist was playing in the Van Cliburn competition. I could play it well.

Piano was a passion.  I could sit down on the bench and the entire world would fade away until all that remained was me, the smooth, familiar keys under my fingers and the sound of the music. It was a love, pure and simple.

It never derailed my belief at the age of six that I would write books.  That was what I’d always wanted to “do.”  But piano?  It was a part of me.  Then I developed carpal tunnel syndrome in my teens and playing became painful.  In my twenties, I had to make a choice — keep playing the piano or make a living, since I work on computers.   I chose to make a living.  It’s been years since I’ve played on any regular basis.  My brothers often talk about watching me play years back, and my husband always looks on in curiousity — since he’s never seen it.  Sure I’ve played since then, but it’s not quite like riding a bike.  Getting back to the keyboard after years away isn’t so easy.  The muscles aren’t used to it, the ability to strike the right key without looking –gone.  And of course, the wrist pain.

However, when my toddler started pounding keys on our piano, I knew that I wanted to give him the opportunity to learn more if he wanted to.  I wanted him to see what it could do, so I sat down to play.  And when I did that,  when he sat down next to me to pound the keys above while I played the song, I realized that it never left me.  The love, the passion, the ability to sit and focus only on the music and nothing else was still very much inside of me.  And I think, for the most simple explanations, that’s what love is.  No matter how far away, how long since you’ve last checked in, love exists.  It doesn’t fade, even if you put it on the shelf and only dust it on occasion.  It doesn’t leave us.  Not the truest kind.

I know there are some saying, well, if love didn’t leave, no one would get divorced. No one would break up.  But is that really true?  I don’t think so.  I can’t count how many times I’ve heard divorced or separated couples say, “I will always love him, but…” It isn’t the LOVE the faded. It’s everything else that complicates it.  The JOY from that love may be shadowed, but the love always seems to stick around in some form.   I didn’t stop playing piano for lack of loving it.  Other things shadowed the joy, and I had to make a choice.  And I started playing again now- – albiet with the extremely easy versions of the sheet music — for love of my son.

At one point in my life, I stopped writing, too.  For a number of years, in fact.  It wasn’t that I didn’t love it.  It was a lot of other things that got in the way.  And life is like that — as mamas, we know that.  But I will say that sitting down to that piano reminded me of a feeling I missed.  And I get even more joy out of it the second time around — watching my son giggle as he pounds the keys, watching him pull sheet music out and “play” it.  I don’t care if he plays for twenty years or twenty minutes — right now, it’s the sweetest music there is.

Is there a love you’ve picked up again because of your children? Or perhaps just for yourself?