Babka, my dad’s grandmother, died when I was three, but it was another two years before the family held a work party to clean out her weather foursquare two doors down from his childhood home. Though her withered face framed by a black kerchief had been as much a fixture at my grandparents’ table as her ever-present pot of simmering potatoes, she spoke only Polish and was therefore a mystery to me until that day I crossed her threshold.
The place felt cavernous and under-furnished with, to my way of thinking, nice antiques that Dad called junk. In the attic were brittle boxes of yellowed linens and National Geographics, cracked high-button boots, and clay marbles flattened from the heat. But even he was impressed by the upright player-piano in the parlor. Considering the sagging affair the house had become, this nod to gentility came as quite a surprise. No one in the family played, which may be why he’d forgotten it, but a piano in those days was just one of those things you owned to show the world that you could.
The ivories, those that weren’t stripped, were butter-yellow and smooth to the touch as I explored the length of the keyboard—from the buzzy bass to the tinny top notes. Several keys didn’t sound at all. But when we found two perforated scrolls of music in the bench, Dad opened a mysterious door to the guts of the instrument and threaded The Beer Barrel Polka into its yawning cavity, flipped a switch, and then presto—dance music!
A lanky figure in grey Dickies with a little girl perched on his toes, he spun me around like Lawrence Welk with a 1-2-3 an’ a 1-2-3. Soon my feet were following instinctively while my eyes locked on the keys toggling of their own accord. The incongruity infected us with such laughter it burst forth in giggles the rest of the day as we trucked it home so that I might take lessons.
The piano sat on the porch for two months, the last thing I touched on my way to school and the first thing when I came home again to plunk out sour melodies. Then he had it appraised, and I came home to a pile of desiccated leaves where it had stood.
I thought then that the piano was the greatest treasure I found that day. Now that Dad is staggering and gasping toward ninety, I know that it was dancing with him.