Day 15
There is a piano on my stairs. Well, not a real piano and not exactly a keyboard, either. It has no real keys and no sound comes from it … but nonetheless there is a piano on my stairs.
A few years back, I adopted Yoshi (my old-lady pug). She is tiny and football shaped and at the time still had control and functionality of her back legs (which she no longer has). And when she was no longer napping on one of the dog beds on the main floor she would stand at the bottom of the stairs, back legs on the slate of the entryway and front legs on the first step of the staircase going up to our second floor and yip at me to come rescue her.
For days, for weeks … and probably for months I’d hear her, each afternoon, calling to me to come get her. And then I’d see her there – wanting to come upstairs but unable to (due to age, fright, inability?). So I’d go down the stairs to get her and carry her up to join the rest of the crew (usually snoring away in my office) but before I could get to the bottom of the flight – she would be hobbling back and forth along that bottom step in excitement and anticipation … and yipping like crazy.
She just looked so funny. And one day I had an idea … and painted a piano keyboard on that bottom step.
And for a month or so afterwards, Yosh “played the piano” daily … as she went back and forth along that bottom step waiting for me to pick her up; because now with the keyboard painted on it – it looked like she was playing the piano.
It was hysterical … hilarious. Riotously humorous. Our own little Ray Charles or Liberace – in pug form – tickling the ivories!
And I say she did this for only a month or two because not too long after the piano was “installed” … she had a stroke and lost the ability to stand on those back legs. They turned to wobbly little sticks that sometimes hold her upright if someone else is holding onto her … but for the most part they are useless.
But she had a good run. And she was wildly entertaining as she played her little puggy heart out.
I have had several (ahem) comments about the “piano on the stairs” but I don’t have the heart to get out the paint remover and take it off – just because she can no longer play it. It was Yosh’s claim to fame and brings back fond, if not silly and funny, memories to me of the smallest percussionist in the family.
And … every once in a while I’ll look down and see Oscar or Dori standing at the bottom of the stairs: back feet on the slate, front feet on that bottom step (contemplating their journey upward), all the while going back and forth along that bottom step … playing Yoshi’s piano.