HALF-OFF; FULL-CIRCLE

At some point in my awkward, horrible middle-school life, I taught myself to play the piano. I already knew how to read music. I played the recorder in 5th grade, then let our creepy band teacher talk me into playing the oboe in 6th. Who plays the oboe? The dorky girl with glasses, braces, and a deep-rooted desire to be cool, that’s who. Mr. Gorman wore the transition glasses of the early 90s and lived in a constant state of almost wearing sunglasses indoors. He would scream at kids and whack our instruments when we didn’t play well, more than once knocking off kids’ braces from their front teeth. My fear of him and my ever-growing need for approval may have affected how well I learned to read music because I quickly realized how easy it was for me to pick up new musical skills. I hated the oboe, so I quit before high school, but my love of music remained strong.

Around the time I mastered middle-school oboe, my older cousin, Julie, got an electric piano for Christmas, and I was instantly obsessed. She learned current songs, Richard Marx and Bryan Adams, and we sang our hearts out, standing on the bench seat in her bedroom bay window. After begging my parents for one just like hers, they eventually sprung for a smaller keyboard with a rickety wire stand. I loved it. Since the internet didn’t yet exist, I had to go to a music store and buy sheet music to learn my favorite songs. My desire and ambition outgrew my financial reach and the rides I could get to Sam Goody, so I started learning songs by ear. I’d use my Walkman and play, pause, rewind, and repeat as many times as it took to figure out how to play the song. I spent hours and hours learning music that way, and, eventually, my skills outgrew my tiny keyboard.

My parents wouldn’t commit to financing my musical dreams quite yet, so I found a way. My dad and I sang in our church choir each Sunday. He was what they called the “Music Minister” for the services. He picked the worship songs and played his guitar, singing into a mic, and leading the whole congregation. There were a lot of Sundays he would wake me up to inform me that he had procrastinated, and he needed me to sing a duet with him for the “special music” part of the Sunday service. Because we were both such a big part of the church music program, we were given access to the church whenever we needed it.

I started staying after the Sunday services and practicing on the huge and beautiful grand piano in the sanctuary. The whole church would be empty and dark (or so I thought), all the doors locked, and I would bang away on that thing well into Sunday afternoons. There was a very young and very cool couple in the choir with us, Janine and John Thompson. They were both very musically talented; I believe one of them had even recorded an album of some sort. Janine and John happened to stay in the office section of the church later than usual one Sunday, and they heard me playing in the sanctuary. I found out later that they would often stay just outside of the sanctuary doors and listen to me play. It must not have bothered them to hear me dramatically plodding through the notes of Guns N’ Roses’ November Rain in between the much easier hymns I did for warm-ups, because they kept watching my private performances for weeks without me knowing.

Janine and John showed up at our house unannounced one day with a piano for me. Seriously. I didn’t even know they had been staying and listening to me, and here they were on my front porch with a white, piece of crap, out-of-tune upright piano. I loved it. My angry dad somehow got it downstairs to our “kind of finished” basement. It wasn’t finished at all, but my parents had thrown a big, dark brown piece of shag carpet down in one corner of our concrete basement, and we made it ours. We had a couple of couches, a fridge, a twin bed (what were my parents thinking), lots of shelves with games, a stereo, a console TV, tapestries and posters covering the cement walls, and now…a piano. It was just as hideous as the rest of the basement. The paint was peeling off, one of the pedals was missing (which was fine because I didn’t know what that pedal did anyway), and the piano bench had been covered with what was clearly a handmade cross stitch. Most of the pattern was a dirty cream color that didn’t even remotely match the color of the piano. It had barely recognizable instruments- a violin, flute, French horn, and a conga drum interwoven with musical notes and flowers. It looked like the handiwork of Jackson Pollock’s deranged grandma, and you could smell years of dust puffing out of it every time you sat down.

Looking back, I can see that I taught myself how to work through my anxiety before I knew what anxiety was. I only played when I felt too much. If I was nervous about something, I found distraction and focus when playing. If I felt worthless, I showed myself what I could do on that old piano. I put my foam headphones on and didn’t give up until I could play what I was listening to. I played certain songs when I cried, other songs when I felt lonely, and some songs I saved for when I needed to feel like I had accomplished something. The best songs were when I was mad. I played louder and louder until all my rage had worked itself out on those slightly out-of-tune keys. As high school came and went, I played less and less often. I made real friends and had a real boyfriend. My piano was a silent observer as I went from watching Disney movies in that basement to sneaking beer from the fridge with friends. Its presence in our teen cave pseudo-dwelling always brought me peace, though, and I sometimes went back to it and all my old songs when I became overwhelmed during high school.

When I left for college, my life at home exploded. During my first year away, my parents got divorced, and my dad, then me, my sister, and finally my mom each packed up our things and moved out of the house we knew as a family. When Mom moved into a much smaller townhouse, the only space she had for my piano was up against a wall in her garage. I was busy creating my new adult life at college. I barely ever came to her new “home” anyway, so my piano in the garage was just fine with me. The piano got bugs. Gnats, I think, nested somewhere inside the upright part of it, and they started making their way into my mom’s townhouse. She had to get rid of the piano, and she did it without telling me. At some point, she presented me with my old piano bench in a very ugly frame. She felt so bad for getting rid of my piano that she had the ugliest part of it professionally smashed into an equally hideous wooden frame. They didn’t even remove the cross-stitch fabric to put it into a normal frame; instead, they built a custom frame/box that fit the entire bench top and would stick out a few inches from any wall on which it hung. It was such a thoughtful (although strange) gesture, and I do remember keeping it for a while. I never hung it, but I know I didn’t get rid of it right away.

The years during and after college were confusing and difficult in a lot of ways for me, and my belongings from before and during my first marriage were uprooted almost as many times as my life was, so the second time parting with my piano bench could have happened during several different incidents. I could have left it in the basement apartment I had in my college town when I had to move back ‘home’ with my mom in her townhouse because all my friends had graduated and moved on, but I dropped out and was broke. I hated that apartment and distinctly remember leaving some of my things behind when they wouldn’t fit in my Chevy Cavalier. It could have been thrown out by my first husband at any point. My things had a way of disappearing if he didn’t want them around, including a pet turtle I had for more than ten years…poor Pookie. It also (and this seems the most likely explanation to me) could have been shoved into one of the 27 trash bags that he stuffed my belongings into with his new live-in girlfriend before the ink had dried on our divorce papers. I was instructed that they had decided what was mine and I could pick up the 27 trash bags at my leisure. I let those trash bags sit in my shitty apartment garage until they were infested with poisonous brown recluse spiders, when they all promptly went in the dumpster, especially and enthusiastically the one with my wedding dress shoved into it.

I have no idea where or when I parted ways with my framed piano bench, but at some point, between the years of 2000 and 2014, we were separated. I’ve told the story since then, mostly about receiving the piano in the first place. I still can’t believe that couple just gave me a piano. They saw me. I barely remember what that feels like because no one sees me now. This morning, at 46 years old, as I was walking out of church, a woman STEPPED on me. She took a step and her full body weight scraped down the back of my heel, almost knocking me over. “Oops,” she said, “I didn’t see you.” She was directly behind me. If there is one thing I feel more than anyone should, it’s invisible. I say it. Aloud. Often. People walk right into me. People forget complete conversations I have with them. My family doesn’t see me. My husband only sees the parts of me that irritate him. My friends see me, but they’re all far from me, and I hide from them when I need them to see me the most. That couple saw me, though, without me even knowing it, and they gave me a gift that still makes me smile when I think about it.

It’s 2025 now, Easter Sunday. It’s raining, cloudy, and cold. I woke up early to make breakfast for a family that is barely here. I made too much, and they barely thanked me. Still, I remembered my mom’s Easter breakfasts, so that’s what I did. It’s how I show love. No one cooks for me. Maybe that’s why I like going out to eat so much. It makes me feel special. Nothing about me feels special right now. My husband has one foot out the door of our marriage, which seems to annoy him more each day. One of my kids has already moved out, and the other one barely ever leaves his room during the weeks I have him. I get to talk to him in the car as I taxi him around if I’m lucky. I just started a new job this year, and it’s great, but everyone there is a stranger to me. All my real friends live far away. I feel sad, scared, lonely, and worthless most hours of most days. My spirits were slightly buoyed from a recent girls’ trip, and I’ve been trying to worry less about what other people might or might not do to me so that I can focus on what it is that I want, what truly makes me happy. It’s a confusing and messy process, but I’m doing my best to keep moving forward. I put my feet on the floor every morning.

Yesterday, Saturday, I planned on getting out of the house for a while. I needed to drop some bags of clothes off at Goodwill, so I figured I’d make it a thrifting day. I’ve realized recently that I enjoy thrifting, but only if I’m by myself. I like to take my time and let things find me. I got a cute, white denim jacket that I could use for Easter and a couple of other cardigans. I went to get my nails done and then hit a little flea market/party store that was on my way home. I go there now and then, and I love to take my time and try to see everything in every booth. Sometimes I find things I want. Sometimes I find things that make me laugh, and sometimes I find things that make me miss someone. Yesterday, something found me. I came around the glass case in front of one of the bigger booths, and I could see there were several framed pieces on the ground, leaning up against the cases. I couldn’t believe it, and I started to feel a little dizzy. That weird, ugly, framed cross-stitch piano bench sat at my freaking feet.

I gasped. I knew immediately what it was, but I needed someone to tell me I wasn’t crazy. I looked around. Picked it up. No price tag; what the hell!?! How was MY old piano bench from CHICAGO and my CHILDHOOD sitting here at a random flea market two miles from my house in BETHALTO, IL in 2025????? It couldn’t be, but I knew it was. I absolutely knew it. I snapped a picture and sent it to my mom. “Isn’t this the old piano bench you had framed for me?” She had no idea what I was talking about. I paced around, starting to shake a little and trying to work out some energy. I walked up to the gentleman in the front who was popping his head around corners and larger items to try and see the lady making weird noises and talking to herself in front of the booth with all the yard flags.

“Excuse me,” I said, “I found this piece and it doesn’t have a price tag on it.” He could tell I wanted to say more. We walked back to the booth, and he explained that sometimes the tags fall off and he finds them on the floor. We both looked, and he soon found it, “Musical Instruments Framed- $42, on sale, 50% off.” I had to tell him. I gave him the two-minute version of the story, and by the time I was done, I FELT crazy, so I told him I was going to call my mom. As I was trying to remind her what it was (she eventually did remember, but barely), I could hear the man on the phone with someone who had to be the owner of the booth. I walked up to the front, and he put her on speaker for me (and Mom) to hear. He told the woman on the phone my story, but all she could remember was that someone gave it to her as a gift over ten years ago, and that yes, it was still half off.

When the gentleman got off the phone, I still felt a little silly for how strongly I reacted, as I told him again that I was 99% sure this was my original piano bench. Immediately, he flipped it over on the front counter. “Not 99%,” he said, “you can be one million percent sure! I just pulled back this piece of the backing that was already loose, and you can see, clear as day, that’s a piano bench in there!”

“I’ll take it,” I said. “I think I have to.”

“You HAVE to,” he said, “This has to mean something.”

I paid $21.00 for it. Half price for a piece of my own trash.

I walked that weird cross-stitched, musical medley, framed bench lid out to my car in disbelief and amazement, and as I placed it in the trunk, I thought, “How in the world did you find your way back to me?” As I drove the few blocks home, I realized that it wasn’t just the ugly piano bench that had found its way back to me, nor I to it. It was the memory of the girl I was when I had that bench. It was as if the Universe had reached down, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, “I see you, Maggie, and I still see you like this…” Maybe I needed to remember that young girl who worked through her problems by creating, learning, and feeling. Maybe I needed to remember the girl who kept trying for hours and hours and hours until she finally worked hard enough to accomplish her goal, even if she was the only one to ever know it. Maybe remembering her, seeing her, is enough for now.

Maggie Partipilo is a high school English teacher and writer based in St. Louis. Her work often explores memory, identity, and the emotional layers of everyday life. This is her first publication with Adelaide Literary Magazine. When she’s not writing, she enjoys spending time with her husband and three teenage sons, watching golf, and cheering on the Green Bay Packers.