“I want a piano,” I repeated to my mother every chance I got. I was around 12 years old, and many of my friends played the piano, so I begged my mother to buy one for me too. My parents were factory workers and we had very little money and lived in a very small house on the South Side of Chicago. So the answer was always no.
I shared my angst in grammar school and my friend Karen, who already took lessons and had a piano, told me that the music teacher she studied with had extra pianos in her breezeway where students without pianos could practice. The teacher was just a few blocks from my house, so I could walk over whenever I wanted.
