Post 30: The Last Student

The following Saturday, a scorcher for May, we drove the 1.3 miles to Mrs. Solenson’s corner-lot ranch home on desirable Edgewood Avenue. There was a side apron-like parking area that led to a small but beautiful formal garden, ablaze with colorful spring roses and a host of other flowers. Mama noticed and was pleased. A person who gardened couldn’t be bad.

The garden path took us to the back door, and Mama rang the bell. We heard rustling, the lock was thrown, and in front of us was Mrs. Solenson, dressed in a light-green linen suit with a well-tailored skirt and matching jacket. Her hair, an almost imperceptible shade of violet blue from a rinse, was perfectly styled, combed, teased, and sprayed into a genteel helmet that would never vary in the ensuing eleven years.

Mama had also dressed for our meeting, and Mrs. Solenson looked pleased. I had on my uncomfortable new Easter clothes, worn only once a few weeks prior and still itchy in their newness. My neck chafed, and I struggled to free it. Mama smiled at Mrs. Solenson and shot me a look that said, Stop fidgeting!

Mrs. Solenson invited us in, and we took a sharp turn in her back vestibule to steep stairs leading to what we assumed was the basement. As we descended, the air became cooler, and my neck instantly itched less. The cool calmed me, and I suddenly liked this lady. We reached the bottom of the stairs to find a fully converted music room with full-height ceilings, two well-windows for natural light, a linoleum tile floor in a tasteful pattern, a sofa and two matching chairs, and an eight-foot concert grand piano. It wasn’t a Steinway, but what it lacked in prestige it made up for in size.

I was momentarily relaxed, but I raised my guard when Mrs. Solenson invited Mama to “Enjoy a seat in my garden for a while.” With Mama leaving us alone, I feared a repeat of two Saturdays ago. I scanned the room quickly for a ruler, and to my relief there was none.

Mrs. Solenson escorted me to the piano and invited me to sit on the square black leather stool placed in front of middle C. Mindful to sit as straight as humanly possible, I lowered myself carefully onto the stool and waited.

“Mr. Carter, you have lovely posture!”

I had to have been visibly relieved.

Continuing, she asked, “May I show you how we address the piano?” As she gently placed her hands on the keyboard and invited me to do the same, I detected the slightest hint of an accent, which, at age five, was relegated to “normal” or “foreign” in my world. Hers was definitely “foreign,” but at the same time gently authoritative in a comforting way that told you, “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing and soon you will, too.” Like Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Solenson wore perfume but just a drop, not a bucketful. She smelled, in my mind, just like an old lady ought to smell: serene.

Despite her reassuring demeanor and her genuinely pleased response to my version of “Mary,” what, in the end, won me over was time. Our lesson concluded after thirty completely enjoyable minutes, during which I learned about the damper pedal, G and F clefs, the word “pianissimo,” and the concept of phrasing. Clearly, Mrs. Solenson was a mother, and most likely a grandmother. She understood the useful attention span of a five-year-old, as well as the futility in trying to make it more than it could be.

As our lesson ended, I bolted from the piano stool and raced to the foot of the stairs. Something, perhaps my manners, made me stop. Mrs. Solenson stood, smoothed her skirt, straightened her suit jacket, and smiled as she walked across her freshly waxed linoleum tile. I gestured for her to go first with a barely perceptible bow, which pleased her even more. “Why, Mr. Carter, I see you are a gentleman. This is a trait which will serve you all of your life.” Relieved that we were going to be friends, I followed behind her up the stairs, through the small vestibule and out into her garden, where Mama was waiting in shade on a small bench.

“Your garden is beautiful, Mrs. Solenson. You must have a green thumb.”

“I used to,” she said, gesturing to her hands, which were, to my surprise, gnarled with what I would later understand was crippling arthritis. “Now I have John, my gardener. He comes every Wednesday. It’s my one extravagance,” she laughed.

            I must have been staring at Mrs. Solenson’s hands when Mama nudged me. “Thank Mrs. Solenson for your lesson.” And then to Mrs. Solenson, “How did Drew do?” This was the final formality in Mama’s decision, but she later told me it was the determining factor as to whether she would allow this woman to spend thirty minutes with her son alone, twice a week for the next eleven years.

            Mrs. Solenson smiled and spoke carefully. “Mrs. Carter, your son feels the music. He has a natural ear. I would like to marry his innate skills with more formal ones that will open Drew’s world to the classics. I would really like to see how far he can go, if you will permit me.”

            Years later over after-dinner coffee, Mama would tell and retell this story with undiminished affection for Mrs. Solenson. “She had me at ‘open Drew’s world.’”

Thus began a remarkable relationship between an old woman and a five-year old.

I would learn during my first year of lessons that I would be Mrs. Solenson’s last student. She told me she had intended to see me only as a courtesy to my mother, who she said had a slight air of desperation in her voice in their introductory phone call. Hearing me play convinced her to take me on.

We would work together for eleven years. Mama dropped me off as a five-year-old that first year; I drove myself to Edgewood Avenue and my final lessons the year I turned sixteen.

To say that Mrs. Solenson pushed me wouldn’t be quite accurate, but I’m certain I would have never pursued the piano the way I did without her distinct presence behind my right shoulder. She introduced me to the classics, and I took to the beauty and intricacy of the music.