In the nineteen sixties my mother won the lottery (literally) and with her new found wealth, she bought a piano. She had the dream that one day one of her three children (my brother, my sister, and myself) would learn to play the instrument.

She had a good reason to suspect that because on my father’s side of the family, nearly everyone was a musician. However, in our family, if your name was Ernie, it was a birthright (my dad’s brother Ernie was a musician, his son Ernie is a musician, and his grandson Ernie is also a musician).

For the rest of them (not named Ernie), it may not have been a birthright, but they were pretty damn close.

One of my best memories as a kid was the annual family Labor Day gatherings, especially the ones at our house. The layout of our neighborhood was, from our backyard, we could view every one else’s back yard from our patio.

Basically, our backyard was the stage, and theirs was the audience.

My dad’s cousins would set up on the patio, with speakers and microphones, and play all day and night, while families on the block would set up chairs and listen to the free concert provided by my families concert.

They played the standards, but couldn’t tell you who played what instrument, or who sang what song.

However, I can tell you two things.

When my father’s cousin Pete (hey, I remembered a name) played Mack the Knife and sang the lyrics:

Now Jenny Diver, ho, ho, yeah, Sukey Tawdry
Ooh, Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown

At the time (I was a kid, remember) I thought Lucy Brown, in the song, was about my Grandma Lucy.

And two, those impromptu outdoor family concerts are some of my most vivid (and best) childhood memories.

As I said, my mother had every reason to believe that family music ability would flow into at least one of her children, hence the piano.

Well, it didn’t (well, not exactly).

There was a time when I tried to teach myself piano, and I got to the point where you’d recognize the tune I played the same way you’d recognize the song your child played on their recorder.

You know what they say, anyone who teaches themselves piano has an idiot for a teacher.

However, my mother was right (but not the way she thought).

My mother’s gift was for her family, and it is her family, it just skipped a generation.

My youngest son Danny is a musician, he plays guitar and writes songs. When he was younger, he played saxophone. He was in a band, and still plays some gigs in Philly.

Guess now he’s going to learn how to play piano (unless he already does).

The beauty of this is it’s a gift from my son’s grandmother, a woman he never knew, but now something of hers resides in his living room.

The piano followed me for more than fifty years, and today it was gone (but not really). It was in our living room when I was a kid, in my living room when I was married, and in my living room when I was divorced. Now it finds itself on a new journey, on a new path in her grandson’s family and all I can say is…