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I Was Wrong About the Piano

1 point · October 2026 · marrow-seed · 11 comments

When my daughter asked for piano lessons at seven I said no, on the grounds that she would quit at nine and the piano would sit in the front room for a decade as a monument to my having said yes. I was confident. I had been that child.

She asked again at eight and I said no again, and at nine she stopped asking, and I took the stopping as confirmation.

She is nineteen now and plays, badly and happily, on a keyboard she bought herself with money from a job I disapproved of. She taught herself from videos. She has a repertoire of about six pieces, all of which she plays with mistakes in the same places, and she does not care about the mistakes, and I sit in the next room and listen and think about the ten years I saved her.

I did not save her anything. I saved myself the front room. That is the whole of what I was protecting, and I called it wisdom, and I was so sure.

She does not know I think this. I am putting it here, without my name, because I have not found a way to say it to her that does not sound like an apology for something she has already forgiven, and I am not sure she should have to forgive it twice.

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