Yesterday the family piano moved out of our house. It has been in my care since 1982, when I accepted responsibility for it after my mother's death, and now it has gone to live with my brother.

I can, sort of, play the piano, but it was never my instrument of choice. I'm a singer who plays things with strings and frets, and the piano was always for figuring out new stuff, or for other people to play. A large Heintzman upright, it takes up as much space as a three-seater sofa, and requires careful placement and maintenance. It was a jolt to let it go, but I feel liberated without it. Also, the living room looks much less congested, and the instruments I do play are no longer shoved into a corner.

When I was a child, the piano in the living room was the unmistakeable sign of genteel, cultured people. The children of such a family took piano lessons following the curriculum laid down by the Royal Conservatory of Toronto and competed annually in the Kiwanis Music Festival or some such event. They played Bach études, Beethoven sonatas and Chopin preludes, and when they got really good they might rip off a little Rachmaninov to impress the neighbours. I'm not sure just how *musical* the entire experience was for many who went through it, for they would reach Grade 6 or so in the Conservatory system, usually about the age of 14, and quit, swearing never to play again -- or at least not that stuff.

I was not one of those piano-playing children, for I wanted to sing, not plunk keys with my back to the room. But although the piano was never central to my musical life, it became my responsibility because I was the most conventionally "musical" one in the family -- I sang in a choir and did wedding gigs (Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring was always a sure seller), and laboured away at the art song repertoire. Of course, it could not be *sold* -- God, no! We were, after all, genteel, cultured people ...

But over the years I got tired of the choir and the art songs -- so much work, so little fun -- and began to focus on other kinds of music. I met Edmund, who prefers Sam Hall to Sheep May Safely Graze, and started to pay more attention to my guitar. The Getaway and the Celtic College at Goderich completed the transformation, and then I took up the mandolin. I can never go back -- now I'm tempted by the tenor banjo!

So farewell, a long farewell, to the old Heintzman. I'm just a picker now.