Happiness is a warm keyboard = I live to and love to write

Posted by Penny4athought on Mon, 14 Nov 2016

This time of year brings me vivid memories, none more vivid than my father and his harmonica....His harmonica was always with him...ready to play a tune on...no matter where or when...He played the accordion too but the harmonica was portable.

And there was a song he’d warm up with, he played it all the time, over and over again...it was a musical backdrop in my days with him that lingered in my mind....I had heard him play this tune since childhood…but since the day he died I’ve forgotten how it goes.

I am not kidding. Neither I nor my two sisters can remember it. Even my husband who I dated for ten years before we married had heard it on numerous family occasions and could not remember it...It was taken from our collective memories the instant he was gone.

It teases us when we hear something like it …but it is never it.

I've searched through vintage music stores of vinyl looking for something…but I don’t even know the name of the tune I am searching for…hoping it will magically return to my memory….but it never does.

We’ve sat together on holidays and looked through decades of family video.. and we draw in a breath hold it when we see he has his harmonica in hand... looking ready to play that tune...but he doesn’t play it on film…somehow we never recorded him playing it, not even once…no film exists of him blowing through his beloved harmonica and entertaining us with that once familiar tune.

Why was this simple tune we use to hum along with...this everyday, mundane knowledge, lost to us on his departure?

We certainly can’t answer why but it baffles us too…and has become a conversation and constant search for that memory every time we talk about it… and we wrack our brains trying to shake loose that tune.

And so…

Dad if where ever you are, you can see our frustration at not remembering this tune…I am sure you are having a wonderful laugh about it right now....because we use to ask you to stop playing it. When we grew out of our teenage years and felt uncomfortable whenever you’d take that harmonica out in a restaurant or other public place and people would stare at us… I know they always enjoyed when you played…but we silly young ladies felt self conscious at those times…and now…I know the laughs are on us…for we would give anything to hear you play it one more time…with gusto.

Somewhere tonight I am sure you are doing just that…playing that tune on your harmonica and Mom is with you….smiling and maybe singing that tune we can’t remember.

In my mind, I tell you I Love you…and I Miss you both…and somehow I hope you know it…and someday I will remember that tune.

Listening to old records of my Dad’s and Feeling the loss of family so poignantly tonight.

Thanks for listening