Flashbacks of my ten- der years include walking through a subtropical back- yard in the dead of night in the arms of a pleasant man from Mexico that Mr. Gutierrez wanted my Dad to meet . . . sitting on the regal and throne-like lap of Mrs. Gutierrez, the original pro- prietor of Tiny Tot Daycare, with the bright red lipstick she wore and kissed us with . . . watching my mother leave to the hospital in her steel blue Chevy Impala as she carried a green small suitcase in her right hand, the evening of my brother’s birth, from behind a screen door, crying, inconsolable as Maria, our maid, held my hand . . . playing in the waiting lobby of Mercy Hospital, as my grandpar- ents and ChaCha watched me and conversed as my Daddy entered the hospi- tal, a day after my brother was born through the slid- ing glass doors, carrying a bunch of gladiolas for my Mom . . . learning how to play Silent Night on the or- gan Santa Clause delivered to me Christmas of 1968. By the time I turned the age of 4, my Mom had enrolled me in weekly piano lessons with Mrs. Harness at her fourplex apartment located a couple of blocks away from Central Boulevard on Eliza- beth Street. To this day, when I hear the scribbling of a well-sharpened pencil on crisp paper, I am careened back to watching Mrs. Har- ness marking my errors on the sheet music and mak- ing sure where I had to hit every flat and sharp note as I played Yankee Doodle Dandy or Ol’ Susana on her piano’s yellowed ivory and worn ebony keys. Mrs. Har- ness and I had a special rela- tionship. You see, she spoke no Spanish and I spoke very limited to no English when my lessons started. I have often told people that my first English words were really letters A through G, words flat and sharp and counting to 8. That’s what I needed to master to be able to learn my basic piano les- sons.
Over time, Mrs. Har- ness and I got to be great friends and she smiled at me more and more with each lesson. My lessons were on Thursdays at 6pm. Mom would drop me off and watch me walk up the stairs and onto the porch, then watched me knock on the screen door and waited for Mrs. Harness to let me in be- fore she proceeded to go run errands. It wasn’t too long before Mom had to drop me off about 10 minutes early on a more regular basis and I arrived at Mrs. Harness’ to find the young man who had his piano lessons before I was scheduled for mine on Thursdays. His name was Phillip. Phillip was a grown young man. He was always freshly bathed and smelled good. Sometimes, he was clean shaven, other times he was not. His hair was always slicked back and a faint scent of Tres Flores Brillantina also ema- nated from where Phillip sat at the piano, either in his wheelchair or on his good days, from the piano bench. On his good days, he did not need a wheelchair, he used his aluminum forearm crutches. On his good days, he would smile and some- times laugh when he man- aged to hit the right keys as he read his sheet music. On good days, he made eye contact with Mrs. Harness and me. On his bad days, Phillip would sometimes drool. On his bad days, Phil- lip would struggle to speak and sounded like he was in pain as he moaned through his attempt to play the piano. No one ever told me any- thing about Phillip . . . To be Continued next week…
