New York missive no 79 - Bubble baths and a piano

The bathroom, when I’m in it and in a bath, becomes a room of my own. I’ve just emerged from an hour-long bubble bath. During that time the bubbles disappeared, I read newspapers and got them splashed, my skin wrinkled and my thoughts wandered. The sound-monitor perched on the side of the sink was quiet of baby cries. Precious time.

Now there’s the noisy rhythm of a breast pump accompanying me as I write this, held in place by a sports-bra with two little holes cut into the cups. I’m topping up J’s supply for tomorrow while I’m at work. At one point during my pregnancy I mentioned that I felt like a bear. As the nursing mother of a newborn it’s easy to feel like a cow.

That’s in addition to the wonderful feelings of course. Among them is the delight of discovering things for the first time again – indirectly, but consciously this time around. It brings you back to the essence of things, clears out the crap. A tree. A toe. A laugh.

********************************************

An email came into my inbox, “My mother’s piano.” In it V described the Jessie French & Sons spinet that her parents had bought after their wedding in 1945 (they met, I later learned, in Astoria). It had accompanied her into her apartments in Brooklyn Heights and Broadway. Now that she was moving out somewhere smaller it needed a new home. Did anyone want it? Yes please, I replied. Without having looked into the size and weight of a Jessie French & Sons spinet (she’d said it was small), nor thought about whether we could get it up into our third floor apartment. I could put that hasty and somewhat impractical enthusiasm down to having a baby preventing me from spending much time in careful deliberation. Or, perhaps more accurately, to my tendency for impulsive “yeses” that to date has brought so much into my life but that could get the better of me one day.

The guys from Washington Heights who moved me from 109th Street to Bank Street, and C and I into our Astoria apartment, managed to get it into their van and through our front door. But there was no way, we realized, they were going to get it up to the apartment. With three of them and C helping they could hardly lift it, let alone get it up some narrow flights of stairs punctuated with sharp turns. So there it sat. A challenge to my impulsiveness. By then I had become attached to it and determined to get it up somehow. I found Marco the piano-restorer nearby in Astoria, who gave me the number of a Chinese man he said could “do the impossible” when it came to moving pianos. Next morning, Chinese man was there on my doorstep with two others – one diminutive, like him, the other huge. When C questioned whether they’d be able to get it up the stairs he responded rather curtly that they move pianos all the time. Sure enough, with the aid of a rope, a blanket and a small set of wheels they’d maneuvered it into place in 10 minutes and were off and away. Now for tuning, and playing...