Sherwood Rd. winds up a steep hill near a central shopping district in Cockeysville, Maryland. Every Wednesday from 1984 to 1986 my mother and I drove through this sleepy backroad’s thick tree canopy, dusty gravel driveways, and its rows of charming colonial ranchers. Whenever we headed up that road it felt like we’d teleported into an Arcadian grove far away from the synthetic suburban sprawl which peered up at the road’s highest points.
In 1981 at age seven I began taking piano lessons. These originally happened in a music store at the Towson Town Center shopping mall. My piano teacher was a family friend named Ms. Wendy. By 1984 Ms. Wendy became Mrs. Wendy. Soon she’d be raising a family, so consequently she chose to start giving lessons independently at the home she shared with her husband in Cockeysville. This is what brought my mom and I to Sherwood Rd. regularly during the mid-1980s.
The strong scent of polished mahogany furnishings. Warm light glowing beneath colorful stain glass shades. A cloistered silence. These are what I remember most about Mrs. Wendy’s practice room. Other than the presence of a digital synthesizer and an upright piano, the cozy nook had nothing in common with the retail shop’s stale antiseptic practice space.
Piano lessons, to me, were just like little league baseball, golf lessons, squash games at the Towson YMCA, Sunday school/confirmation classes. Just another dorky suburban activity that my friends and I did. Without a fully-developed sense of self or any nuanced understanding of integrity, I was desperate to fit in, so I did whatever other kids my age were doing, especially since parents claimed stuff like little league and piano lessons would make us kids more “well rounded.” It was a daring move when I quit piano lessons in late-1986.
The decision was easy—I wasn’t passionate about piano playing. It was all my mom’s idea, plus I was starting to get hooked on the stranger side of FM radio rock. The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter,” Pink Floyd’s “Echoes,” and Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” may have been familiar to Mrs. Wendy, but I knew there was no way she could find a direct thread connecting novice piano standards like “Frère Jacques” to free-form psych rock. On the other hand, how to tell her I was quitting was complex, something I agonized over.
At that last lesson, as I slogged through yet another half-hearted performance, she asked if something was wrong and if I’d like to learn a new piece. I replied, “No.” There was a silent pause. She spoke up again, ”Well… what would you like to do?“ I looked up at her, and answered, grimacing but lucid, enveloped in the strange event horizon that comes with a revelatory confession: “No offense, Mrs. Wendy, you’re a great teacher, a nice person and everything, and I know you just had a baby, but I’m afraid I can’t take piano lessons anymore. I really hope this doesn’t make things complicated for you and your family.”
She laughed. It wasn’t a loud and hearty laugh, but I bet she probably wanted to laugh extra loud. From an adult perspective it all seems absurd now: an 11-year-old, sitting there guilt-ridden thinking that the fate of a professional music teacher’s career hinged on an extra hour’s worth of lessons. Wendy lived in an upper-middle class neighborhood in a big house on a hill. Her husband probably had a white-collar job. The cost of their polished mahogany furnishings alone dwarfed the meager enrollment fees paid by even five or six students.
She eased my worries and let me know that plenty of other kids were still paying her regularly for lessons. My exit from the realm of rudimentary piano plonking would not rip a giant hole in her purse. Her husband and child would survive. That fact was a big relief for me and we both had a laugh about it, shook hands, and parted ways amicably.
My mother’s reaction? That’s a different story. To mom, the coda of my stalled career as the Liberace of suburban living rooms was disgraceful. She scolded me, complaining that I’d embarrassed her and had no respect for Mrs. Wendy, music and any other respectable pursuit. Even with the mom drama, it was the first time I’d felt the freedom to be myself. Disappointing mom wasn’t something I could fear anymore. Conformity was no longer a regularly scheduled part of my life.
Situations like this recurred constantly throughout my life and they’d always end the same way: inevitably everyone around me would realize that their entire purpose in life couldn’t be destroyed by my lack of interest in the shared routine of others. A vote against piano lessons didn’t represent an anti-music protest and my mom wouldn’t stay angry about it forever. Though the decision to drop the class was barely a bump in the road, from a personal standpoint it was a climactic crescendo, one of the first fearless steps I’d take in the quest for happiness and identity.