I have noticed an odd little desire cropping up in me these past few weeks.

I do not know if I will actually act on it - very likely not, as I am generally too frugal and I am too aware of how little free time I have - but it was engendered by something I saw at one of the antique stores on my last trip to them.


A spinet piano. I've started wanting a small piano.

I have a space where I THINK a spinet would fit, with a little furniture juggling: right next to my fireplace, if I moved the console table with my CD player on it. The console table is actually a "sofa table" at a sufficient height to work BEHIND a sofa, so I could easily enough push my sofa out a bit from the opposite wall (getting it away from the window would probably be better for the upholstery in the long run) and putting the table along the section of wall that is behind part of my sofa.

I have not measured the space to see if a spinet would actually fit; that almost feels like going too far down a slippery slope.

The spinet I saw at the antique shop - and I have no idea how good of one it was - was something like $1750, "delivered AND tuned."

Now, honestly: I have no time to learn to play the piano. I do not have the requisite hour a day for practice; it would cut too much into my other hobby-time. And if I bought one, I'd feel like I had to take lessons (to learn to play it RIGHT), and if I took lessons, I'd need to practice enough to be good.

But it is still an idea I like. I like the thought of being able to come home at the end of the day, and put a piece of Bach or Mozart on the music stand and just sit down and play for fifteen minutes to forget the day. (Or to be able to play old folksongs or hymns or do some of that crazy barrelhouse style stuff that you see in the old western movies).

There is the complicating factor of the fact that my parents already have a piano that no one is using. It is a baby grand, inherited from my dad's parents (his father, among other things, was briefly a salesman for Steinway. During the depression, when they could not afford to pay him, they gave him a piano). It is a good piano - the last tuner who came in said it had not been overplayed and it had a nice tone.

I am sure that if I asked forcefully enough (and if I offered to pay the truck freight), they would probably give it to me. But. I do not know if I have space for a baby grand, even a very good one. (Perhaps if I moved my big chair over on the other side of the fireplace...)

I do expect someday (hopefully just a Someday when my parents decide to downsize the household), it will come down to between my brother and me who takes custody of the piano. I decided a while back that I would surrender it to him if
(a) he and my sister-in-law have children who would take lessons
or
(b) one of the two of them express a desire to learn to play.

Because, I think that the piano should stay in the family - at least for another generation - and I also think it should be played. (Neither of my parents really plays).

But if they have no interest, I'd rather take it than see it sold. (I might rather see it donated to either my parents' church - if they'd use it rather than selling it - or to the small university in my parents' town that has an excellent music school, again if the piano were going to be used). But otherwise - I would kind of want it.

I like the idea of trying once again to become musical.

(And the funny thing? Here is how good I am at anticipating consequences: I find myself thinking, "but if you learn to play, you will find yourself being called on to be an emergency-replacement pianist at church when the regular one is sick." Yes, well, such is life).

So I don't know. I don't think I'm going to act on it right now but if the issue of "what shall we do with the piano" comes up, I may put in my opinion.

But I will also studiously try to avoid looking longingly at spinets in antique stores, at least for a while.