Bringing Home the Duncan Phyfe: Chapter 18

That Pause Before the Pie

Regardless of what senses are involved, it’s the moment after they can simply take or give no more that brings a smile. Whether it’s the finale of fireworks on the 4th of July, the long last note of Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma,” or the last forkful of a holiday feast, it’s in the instant afterwards, when the full weight of passing pleasure settles in, that our eyes see best what they treasure most.

See if it is not so the next time your sense of sight or taste or touch is running over and love is there to soak it in. It’s in these moments of pause that the tie that binds is strengthened for the days when senses are not stirred. It is the dailiness of life that tests us all. And so it is with worship or amorous affection or fireworks or family feasts alike—there comes a need to join together, to celebrate, to let our senses overflow. It’s then we learn to look beyond our want, beyond our fullness, beyond ourselves to a kind of love that endures need and plenty and loneliness.

We’re prone to forget these things, but pausing at such times may lend new meaning to that awkward lull in the conversation at the end of family feasts when sighs and smiles settle down to silence until someone breaks it with the question: Will it be pumpkin or pecan pie?
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On that Thanksgiving Day in 1951, as Dad sat around the table with Mom's family, they all decided to wait a while before cutting the pies. They stepped through the broad round archway that led from the dining room to the front living room.

There in the floor of the archway, above the coal furnace below, was the only source of heat for the entire house. The metal grate was the size of a folded card table and had the smooth, dark patina of decades of foot traffic. Freshly stoked, the grate was too hot to stand on in stocking feet, but it was a family habit for those wearing slippers or shoes to pause there to soak in some heat before moving on. ............. [This human toaster held two or three adults [or four to five kids]comfortably.]

The couch was crowded, the two easy chairs filled, so Mom pulled out the piano bench from the old upright on the staircase wall.

"That's right. Play us a piece, Beverley," said my Grandma Spencer.

Mom was no prodigy, but as a child she had been prodded through tap dancing lessons, piano lessons, and the Drum and Bugle Corp to boot. With that fine résumé, she had spent endless hours tap dancing on the porch or playing her latest "piece" on the piano. But Mom didn't mind. In fact, the visit would not have been complete without taking requests from around the room as she had done all her life.

She opened the piano bench and began to dig through layers of sheet music.

Piano benches are the most forgotten space in a house. They are miniature attics of sorts. Years gather there. Memories of music from various stages of our lives. Songs that became a part of "home" and unknowingly a part of life's sound track. It's all there in the bench. ... [If you have an old piano in your house, see for yourself if this isn't so.]

She picked out a handful of old favorites. I should mention here, that because she grew up with her grandparents and parents under the same small roof, Mom's favorites spanned three generations. If those she loved "loved" a song, she loved it, too. Mom would later pass along to us her gift of treasuring old songs.

She pulled something for everyone from the bench: "In the Evening by the Moonlight," "My Blue Heaven," [Hear MBH here] "Bell Bottom Trousers," [Dad was Navy Reserve and Richert would soon join the Navy. Hear BBT here] and "Give Yourself a Pat on the Back." She ended with her mom's favorites: "It's Three O'Clock in the Morning" then took one more request from Dad Collinge, the Missouri Waltz, a Ragtime hit from his teen years. It had become popular again in 1949, when the new President Truman played it on the piano in a newsreel. One day shortly after that, Grandma slid the music on the piano in front of Mom and said, "Here's a piece to play for Dad."

Long before Thanksgiving Day, 1951, my mother had learned to find joy in pleasing those she loved, but she also knew how to play her hand. After embellishing the last note of Missouri Waltz with some improvised left-hand chords, she spun her legs to the side of the bench and said, “I don't know about you, but I’m ready for some pie!”
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[Since I have not yet figured out how to play music behind my posts, if you have a moment, open this post in two different windows. In one of them, open this link to that old "tie that binds" hymn." Turn your sound on. Listen to the simple piano tune and imagine an old upright piano playing in the front room of a gray clapboard house on Forest and Riverview in Port Huron, Michigan, circa 1951. As that plays, go to the other “window” and re-read the first three paragraphs of this post. May that be the feeling you sense behind all of the music we enjoy this beautiful Christmas season.]