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LEARN HOW TO MAKE OUR TYPE LARGER

	Just a thought
	Betty Lammers

For me?
Published January/February 2001

Gift dude

When you think back about the gifts you received over the years, aren’t there some that really stand out? And it had nothing
to do with the cost – it just was something that you really wanted. Gift-giving season just passed and I decided to concentrate on people close to me over the next year so I, too, can choose something special.

There was the bed light I got several years ago and appreciate it to this day. One of my vices is reading in bed and this light turns in whichever direction you want. That and a pillow seat and I’m all set.

Another one was a salad-spinner. My sister gave me that one and her husband asked, “Who would ever want something like that?” Knowing I had a garden growing lettuce, spinach, kale, etc., she said, “Betty would,” and she was right. Every time I use it I think of her.

A lap-board with a bean-bag bottom — inexpensive, but so handy. I use it to write checks and do crossword puzzles, sitting in an easy chair. It even has a little ridge on the bottom so the pencil doesn’t drop.

There were many others, but I think the most thoughtful one was a present from my late husband. For years, I always wished I had learned to play the piano. I took lessons as a child, but the Depression came along and wiped them out. (I probably wouldn’t have stuck to practicing them anyway.) I took lessons on my own while we were dating, but when we married there was no room for a piano in a little apartment so that ended it. Years later, we bought a piano and some of our children took lessons, but with six of them to raise, I had no time for playing. I really didn’t think of it again.

He did! On my 73rd birthday, despite his illness, he had the piano tuned and gave me piano lessons. To me, that was the most thoughtful gift of my life. I went weekly, at 3 p.m. and my lesson was followed by a lot of school kids’. Talk about a generation gap! One week, a new older man started the half hour preceding mine and I felt so good to have a peer, but he was an accomplished player who just wanted to learn some new riffs and how to put a medley together. Oh well.

The topper came when one of the mothers met me in the parking lot and asked. “Where were you at the recital last week? You should have participated. Everyone did so well.” I can’t imagine that she expected me, in my “golden years,” to sit on a stage and play a piece from “John Thompson’s Modern Course for the Piano, The First Grade Book.” Perhaps something catchy like “Little Spring Song” of “The Tiresome Woodpecker.”

Oh by the way, I’m teaching myself now. I’m on the Second Grade Book.

E-mail Betty Lammers at betty@homefrontmagazine.com.

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