Fixing A Hole

 "Make a hole!" This is what you might hear when you see emergency crews rushing through a crowd. They are far too busy with the rescue to make time for pleasantries. The hole is a parting of the looky-loos who tend to converge whenever someone falls, crashes, burns or becomes unstable in some way or another. That hole should part the gawker wave in order for the real work to begin. I encounter this wave on a regular basis on the playground, where the witnesses always outnumber the injured by at least a ten to one margin. Sometimes the relief I bring in the form of a band-aid and a hand up is completely obscured by the concern of their peers.

For what it's worth, that was not the case this past weekend as my family worked in concert to prepare for one of the largest relief efforts in our collective history. My mother's piano, a baby grand that has been with her for more than seventy years, will soon be making its way across the western United States, eventually coming to rest in the front room of my house. In this particular operation, there were not crowds of people to arrange, only mobs of furniture. 

For decades now, I have been using the phrase, "Hey, toss me that piano," as an example of non-sequitur. Now I find myself in the odd position of preparing to fair catch a musical mass of metal and wood, and tucking it seamlessly into a household that already contains one piano. Ideally, this prior piano would have been moved out ahead of the arrival of the one my mother is donating to me. As it turns out, moving pianos is not something that is done lightly. Not physically or emotionally. My mother grew up playing that baby grand, and it provided much of the background music of my youth as well as being the instrument upon which I hammered away half a dozen years of lessons myself. When my son was of an age that piano lessons seemed compulsory, we rounded up a relic that was moved, to hear my wife tell it, "by the two largest humans" she had ever seen. 

Somewhere out there is a piano with my name on it, wending its way toward me with frightening speed. Recognizing this as a call to arms, I set about rearranging the room in which I hope to house two pianos. At least for a little while. This required the removal of my wife's desk, which was replaced by a smaller version for the time being. The contents of that behemoth needed to be loaded into boxes for access during the time that everything is in pieces. The floor beneath had to be cleaned and polished,  and a hole the size of a baby grand piano needed to be left in the middle of the floor, where discussions already abound about which way the old girl will face once it arrives. 

Across the great divide, a similar action was taking place, as the heart and soul of my mother's house was removed. After all those years, my sister-in-law and niece decided that mom didn't need to be there to witness the excision. While they went for a drive in the mountains to take in the fall colors, my older brother supervised the hole that was being created in my mother's life. A couch was moved across the room to cover the space created. The band-aid, if you will. 

So another chapter begins, holes made and filled. Memories renewed and new ones recorded. If this had been an actual emergency you would have been instructed where in your area to tune for news and information. Nothing to see here. Just a piano being tossed.