Requiem for my piano teacher

Carrot-colored, the crevices and the cracked constitution of the building stood out as my hands were enclosed in my mother’s

Gray in the hallway, and suddenly, all at once, all bright

An aged man emerged, his stature tall

His gentle, veined hand outstretched in front of me, his fragile fingertips leading to the opened room

I followed them

Modest, light-brown, a piano with a matching bench beckoned me

He followed, sitting next to me, and his tender baritone voice uttered simple tasks - press the skinny black keys, press the wide white keys

“You’re sharp,” he said with a grin

This was our first lesson

A year into my lessons, my parents no longer had the time to drive to the music studio

He insisted he could not let me go, clinging onto that “sharpness” I exhibited in our first lesson

What was sharp in me succumbed to a ritenuto[2] [3]

What was a passionate habit was now a difficult chore, an out-of-tune melody, a miserable cycle that would repeat itself every Sunday

Occasional silent tears screaming “I give up!” accidentally let loose in front of the only person I hated to hate

It was his fault, I convinced myself, even though it was me who never practiced enough, me who only wished to be skilled but never carried anything out

This was the end of my music life; I was at the double bars that indicated the end of a score

I started to wish we had never had our first lesson at all

Dr. Novak felt the opposite

In that time period of three years,

He could have stopped my lessons,

Yet he struggled with me,

Confident in my potential,

Patiently teaching me as best as he could

I, too, tried to cling onto that wonderful first lesson, using that raw passion to get me through my struggles.

I rode on that momentum and crescendoed

It was my teacher who drew me out

He pushed me to learn contemporary songs rather than forcing the highly esteemed but highly stuffy Bach, Clementi, or Schubert on me

Dearer to me than my grandparents, who were either passed away or extremely distant, Dr. Novak, ever since our first lesson, was the person I naturally, inevitably emulated

Since we first met, it was his kindness that made me kind

It was the compassion he showed then that made me want to develop my piano skills, songs, and music theory

It was his kind criticism that teaches me to handle and evaluate future judgment[4]  rather than internalizing critique

I will cherish our time together, from the very beginning to the coming end, and not forget his devotion to my ensuring my devotion to music

It was that fateful first encounter that still inspires me to continue piano passionately, long into the future