I just wanted to move the piano

by Marion Ueckermann

You’ve had those days, I know you have. Days when the one small thing you set out to do turns into something huge, something that leaves you exhausted and sapped of all energy.

I had a day like that this weekend. All I wanted to do was move the piano. It stood against a wall where the afternoon sun shines in, and I realized that six years in that position had caused the beautiful rosewood veneer to fade. It HAD to move. I had no choice. In my husband’s family for probably four generations, this 150-year old piece could not get ruined under my hands.

But when I shoved, and grunted, and groaned to get it to budge, I realized why the piano hadn’t moved from the day it had been placed in that position. Pretty much like my novel, The Piano, I had written which was inspired by this piece and has been on my computer for almost as long. But more about that later. Back to the piano. It was H-E-A-V-Y! The fact that the wheels no longer worked, jammed or rusted in one position and likely all four wheels at different angles, did not help, either. By the time I’d moved the heavy load the seven foot from one wall in my lounge to the other, I had scrape marks on the ceramic floor the entire way. I quickly scrubbed the tiles with a wet cloth and cleaner. Finally, the marks came off…almost.

Now I had to move the three-seater couch to the opposite wall, and move the two-seater into its place as the piano plus three-seater equaled not enough wall. That in turn had me moving the single-seater chair to make way for the three-seater.

Oh, the wall was a little dusty behind where the single chair had stood, as well as where hubby had removed the family crest wall-hanging to take it for dry-cleaning. I grabbed the wet cloth and wiped the marks. Which in turn made me realize how dusty the rest of the wall was. Couldn’t have a half-clean/half-dusty wall, so I grabbed the cleaner, sprayed some on the wall and wiped. And rushed to the kitchen to rinse the dust from the cloth, and wiped again. Spray, wipe, rinse, repeat. And repeat.

Satisfied with the clean wall, and making a mental note not to let the cloth touch another wall, I moved on to mopping the floors beneath where the couches needed to stand. Then I eased the two-seater into its new home beside the piano’s new home.

Not wanting the piano to extend the six or so inches over the window where I’d run out of wall, I decided to let the large instrument extend into the dining room area beside our staircase, instead. I could fill the gap…hide the fact…build my own little fake wall. I hurried upstairs and grabbed the two slender wicker pedestals I had up there. They were the perfect size, and if I stacked them on top of each other, they’d make a “natural” extension of the too-short wall and hide the piece of the piano that jutted out. I lifted the hi-fi speaker off the first pedestal. Ugh, more dust. When had my maid last cleaned up there? I made a mental note to return with polish another day. Almost a month ago, I'd retrenched my maid. I was now the maid in the house.

Downstairs again, and proudly bearing the two pedestals, I wiped them clean. Rushed to the kitchen to rinse the cloth, and wiped some more. Wipe, rinse, repeat.

When I positioned the pedestals, I decided I didn’t like my idea after all. I’d either take those pedestals back upstairs, or use them somewhere else downstairs.

I shoved at the piano again, inching it over until it was flush with the end of the wall. It would just have to spill over the window a tad. I glanced down at the floor. Groan, scratched again. I sprayed more cleaner onto the tiles and once again applied some elbow grease. I stepped back. Over the wet tiles. With my now dirty feet. Sigh. Grabbed the mop. Cleaned the floor. Again.

By the time I finally had the piano and the couches all in place, I’d wiped yet another wall from floor to roof. And I’d sprayed, wiped, rinsed, and repeated several times, too.

So now I had a bare wall where the piano had stood. Can’t stay like that. I know, I’ll move the bookshelf around the corner and stand it in the empty space…I’ll figure out what to put into the new empty space. Maybe those two wicker pedestals.

I wrapped my fingers around the bookshelf and pulled. Nope. Not going anywhere with almost 200 paperbacks inside. I unpacked the books…on the piano, the couches, the floor. I polished the cabinet and shelves, and once I’d moved the bookshelf around the corner, I repacked the books. In alphabetical order!

By now my lounge was looking pretty incredible, but there was a gigantic space on the one wall where the single-seater had originally stood because I now had to move it over a little from its original position because the three-seater couch I’d wanted to move to that wall just didn’t look good in that spot. So I moved the three-seater to where the two-seater was because I couldn’t move it back to the original spot because there was no longer space as the piano was too long. But because the three-seater was longer than the two-seater which had originally stood in front of the large window, it encroached on the single-seater. Hence the reason that chair had to move over a little and the space that now needed to be filled.

I know, I’ll move the cabinet with all my Lilliput Lane clay houses—four shelves of them—into this blank space. It’ll fill that gap nicely. Besides, it needed a new spot because the piano now stood in its place. Once moved, I polished the cabinet, unpacked all the little houses, dusted them off, polished the shelves, and repacked my collection.

Well, I might have had a great new look to the lounge, but the dining room looked pretty sad as the mess had now migrated there. I set about washing the next open piece of floor. Once done I moved away to grab the polish and cloth. And stepped on the wet floor. Again. I grabbed the mop and cleaned my dirty footprints. Again.

Ugh, the moved bookshelf had left dust marks on the wall where it had stood. I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t resist. I cleaned the mark. And had to wipe the entire wall. Spray, clean, rinse, repeat. And repeat. And repeat. It was a far bigger wall than the others.

I turned to my hubby. “Um, sweetheart, I think  we’ll need to move that family crest hanging because the Lilliput Lane cabinet now covers half the wall where it hangs. And besides, it’ll fill this wall where the bookshelf stood really nicely. We’d just have to move all the paraphernalia from that wall to somewhere else. Not sure where we’ll put dad’s wooden eagle though if we do that.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

As my husband’s form retreats, I run the now polish-laden rag over said bird to clean off more dust. And the toenail breaks off. I send my three-year old grandchild on an errand to tell his oupa (gramps) that ouma (granny) needs him to glue the bird’s toenail back on. Oupa is back in the garage fixing the candelabra holder from the piano that I’d noticed was loose.

Well, I could go on and on about the rest of my spring-cleaning-in-autumn spree, but I’ll spare you the details of the numerous times I washed the floor, or the fact that the cleaning spilled over into the kitchen and all the way down the passage to my office. One-and-a-half tins of polish later and over ten hours on my feet, I finally flopped into bed. Cleaning, bending, stretching had exhausted me and I bore a backache of note.  My “just want to move the  piano” had turned into something far bigger than I’d anticipated. But what a day… As I’d polished and wiped and cleaned, I’d handled special things which brought to mind special memories… The antique piano on which I based my novel, The Piano. This book will finally be released in June in the Cherish box set. The crocodile tail my dad had mounted and whose story is in Bush Tails, the book of short stories of my dad’s hunting and fishing escapades that’s now available on pre-order. The wooden bird my dad made. The brass mining lamps that had belonged to my late father-in-law. The ninety-year old leather satchel that had belonged to his father. The “Coke can” my son had made as a child from a piece of wood for his father. My dad’s elephant-engraved leather shoes. The reindeer slippers my son bought for us which hang beside all our other Finnish souvenirs and paraphernalia. The Lilliput Lane ornaments, many of which are modeled on places I’d actually visited in the UK and Ireland. The books in my bookshelf written by some of my good author friends.

Yes, although a tiring day spent doing everything I hadn’t planned to do, it was so worth the while to be taken down memory lane with every little item that hangs on the walls or stands on the shelves in our home. And I came to a conclusion…I have far too many ornaments and books, and way too little wall and shelf space.

MARION UECKERMANN's passion for writing was sparked when she moved to Ireland with her family. Her love of travel has influenced her contemporary inspirational romances set in novel places. Marion and her husband again live in South Africa, but with two gorgeous grandsons hanging their hats at the house next door, their empty nest's no longer so empty.

Visit Marion at www.marionueckermann.net

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Another Twenty-Six Years

A couple of weeks back, my wife and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. We have always both been pretty casual about the whole anniversary thing. Our shared view is that, if we have to place too much emphasis on the milestones, then perhaps we’re not enjoying the journey as much as we should. Also, raising our children was so demanding we did not really have the presence of mind to remember much beyond surviving each day. It was only when our kids starting preparing to leave the nest that we found ourselves remembering our anniversary.

“Say, didn't we get married in March?” my wife asked.
“Yes we did. It was the 10th or 12th, I think,” I replied.
“How long has it been?”
“Twenty-two years. No wait, twenty-three. Wow.”

That was three years ago. Last year I bought a fancy silver picture frame with “25th Anniversary” engraved along the bottom and two oval holes for photographs. The plan was for me to find a photo from when we first got married and another more recent picture.

That never happened and the frame stood empty all year. This year, however, I made the effort and found two suitable candidates. The first was taken on our wedding day (we looked vaguely terrified). The other was from our first trip to England without the kids (we look relieved). So we now have a beautiful silver frame showing where we started and how far we have come. Through a trick of perspective, my wife’s wedding gown appears to run diagonally across the other, more recent, picture. It looks almost like a path, as if God is showing us that he knew our steps long before we did and that those steps would lead us...here.

What struck me while searching through the albums and computer folders, was just how much we have been though since tying the knot a quarter of a century ago. I got to revisit my children’s lives, from them clinging to us while we helped them take their first wide-eyed steps, to them gazing into the distance with that longing in their eyes that meant they would soon be gone. Our aim was always to raise them to love Jesus and build their lives on God’s unshakable foundation. They have both had their struggles with faith, but my daughter talks about God as if he is a part of the family and last night my son had to end our Skype session early to attend the church youth group he leads. This gives me hope for their futures.

Somewhere in those photographs was a snapshot of my very first novel and I remembered so clearly why it was I started writing. I wanted to create stories that Christians could enjoy and that perhaps atheists could read as well. What I never expected was for it to take so long for that dream to come to fruition. In fact, the journey of my writing coincides almost exactly with that of my children. Last year both my son and daughter moved out to start lives of their own. Earlier this year I discovered something about my first novel that made the years of effort worthwhile.

While searching for my book “Alpha Redemption” on Google, I found it listed on a site of top 25 A.I. novels, surrounded by secular books from the likes of Asimov, Banks and Clarke. The reviewer said that he never thought that he would one day write a positive review for a Christian novel, but that that day had come. Looking at my little book sitting on that list of secular titles among the giants of science fiction, I realized that I could happily stop writing because this is exactly what I set out to do all those years ago.

But, like any journey, it doesn't finish till you get to the end. My children’s lives have just begun and the path leading from my wife’s dress does not stop but appears to pass out of the frame and on into the unknown. And I have too many stories inside my head to stop writing now. I hope that this is just the beginning and that, twenty five years down the line, I will be looking for more photographs to put inside a frame and marveling at how much we have lived during that time.  

DEVOTION: Remember When . . . ? by Shirley Corder

Psalm 77:11 “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.”

_________________________________

Some years ago, my husband and I went on holiday to Cape Town. While there, we visited with a group of friends we hadn’t seen for twenty-five years. How much we had to share.

All our young children, who had played together in far-off Zimbabwe, were now married. It seemed hard to believe that those little kids of yesteryear were now the same age we had been then. They all held down responsible jobs. They were parents of growing children. We were all now grandparents.

We had all moved around a number of times. My husband and I had lived in three different cities since the time we stayed near our friends in the same suburb of Harare.

The hours sped by as we shared memories of events forgotten by some, remembered by others. Some stories brought laughter. Others caused us to swallow tears. Every now and then silence fell on the group, as we recalled scenes long buried in our memory banks. As we looked back over the years, we recognized God’s hand on our past. The more we shared, the easier it became to believe that God would do wonderful things in the future.

I remembered the words in Psalm 23: “Goodness and mercy will follow me . . .” As we reminisced, I saw how, when I had struggled with a difficult situation, God had been there. His goodness and mercy had indeed sustained me through those times. Yet I only recognized this when I looked back.

No wonder God’s Word encourages us to remember and meditate on what He has done in our lives.We don’t need to worry about the future—God is already there. One day we will be able to look back and say, "I remember when . . . and God saw me through."

PRAYER: Lord, help me to recall the amazing things you have done in the past. Thank you that I can trust you with my future. Amen.

How would YOU finish the sentence, "Remember when . . . ?"

SHIRLEY CORDER lives on the coast in South Africa with her husband. Her book, Strength Renewed: Meditations for your Journey through Breast Cancer contains 90 meditations based on times that she remembers when God saw her through the rough times spent in the cancer valley. It is available for pre-order at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble (B&N.com). Please visit Shirley through ShirleyCorder.com, where she encourages writers, RiseAndSoar.com, where she encourages those in the cancer valley, on Twitter or on FaceBook. Sign up for her writers' newsletter.