Magic Stirred in Me

Learning How to Play

I can remember reading The Velveteen Rabbit. It wasn’t at bedtime. It was in the late 90s into the early 2000s on a dignified soft brown couch in my piano teacher’s living room. My older brother Shay and I took lessons on Wednesday early afternoons. What is more enlightening about The Velveteen Rabbit is the inner universal truths in it. But what surpasses those truths is my piano teacher who demonstrated them through her love and care and sharing her passion with me for music. It would inspire me with courage in my future path, but more importantly, she taught me the value in loving what you do.

Being the sheepish kid that I was, I always let Shay go first. Our teacher, Velma Morz, was a welcoming presence every time we stepped into the door and climbed the steep stairs that led into the living room where we stayed for a couple hours. Her name was like she stepped out of the title of that book. Velvet. Velma. Her first name, already so musical, lined up with her last name which sounded and looked like she stepped into a waltz dance from how it was spelled. In fact, that was also her late husband’s name – Walt.

Upon my entry, Velma’s bright brown eyes lit up her whole face like the fairy that brought the Velveteen Rabbit back to life. She often wore red or purple, two of her favorite colors. When she spoke, her voice rang with such musical enthusiasm that you had to wonder how she was stuck teaching piano lessons to kids in a small Iowan town. You wonder how she belonged to this world. She probably didn’t. In another life in another world, she was probably coaching little fairies how to fly by making music. Even though she was in her late sixties at the time, she had a presence that was much younger than that.

On those afternoons, I read as much as I could of The Velveteen Rabbit until Shay’s lesson ended and I had a turn on the bench. While I waited, I drifted that other world and so far away and yet felt so close. Velma kept her room a cozy temperature around the year. In the summer, she welcomed in the summer breeze while I released my songs into the world outside. In the winter months, she kept the room warmed up just enough so I didn’t feel like I was burning under my thick turtleneck sweaters I often wore back then. During the winters was when the music itself danced around the room and felt like it was just for her and me.

I think it was my dad who told me that Velma had been a widow for a while. I wonder if that’s part of the reason why she chose The Velveteen Rabbit as a book she put on display for her students to potentially read while they waited for their turn. Maybe she had loved long like the little boy in that story who loved his rabbit so much that he cried when his nanny told him that he should throw his rabbit out. As I grew up, I felt that way about my own animals, especially the frog that my dad had picked out for me while he was on a trip. He narrated that he went around, looking for the toy meant for me.

“I want to go home with you!” My dad, quite the storyteller, mimicked. He also then turned around, as he told his story. Then he changed his tone to his own. “Who said that?” He paused and returned to the high-pitched voice that was supposed to be the frog’s. “Me!” said a voice. Dad told me that he looked up and lining the shelf of board games, he saw a beanie bag frog there. It wasn’t one of those Beanie Babies that were popular back then, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This frog was dressed in a black bowtie and a wide smile was spread from cheek to cheek and rose into his golden eyes. Later I would carry the frog on shopping trips and in long car rides and would gnaw on his hands whenever more adults than normal were around. I felt bad later because I was one of those kids who believed that animals came alive when you weren’t around. But it was like the older I got, the more I loved this frog because his wear was what made him mine.

No More Play

And the older I got, the more I realized, deep in my subconscious, that while The Velveteen Rabbit is centered around a stuffed toy, passions can also be associated with how you grow to love them as time passes. I didn’t stay at the piano forever. I can’t remember the exact day I quit, but I know it was before we moved, and we had to give the piano back. The piano we had borrowed from someone. All my older brothers before me, played piano, but none stuck with it. The piano formed some of my best memories around Christmas because Velma would set up recitals for her students at the local United Methodist Church.

It was difficult to choose what Christmas carols to play, even though we could play up to three. Usually I determined which ones I would perform based on how comfortable I was with playing them from memory around others. I also tried to choose pieces that I know other students would pass over. Most liked Santa Claus themed ones like “Jolly Old St. Nicholas,” “Jingle Bells,” or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Since I grew up in a strict religious household, I was taught mostly hymns anyway. From the beginning, my parents told me that Santa Claus wasn’t real, so I didn’t have the same sentiment about him as other children had. But the piano pieces that narrated story parts of Jesus’ birth made Christmas come alive for me, songs like: “What Child is This,” “We Three Kings,” or “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” Every year around Christmas, Velma would encourage me to make as few mistakes as possible and pretend like I had an audience on the last lesson day before the recital. But those were the times when my fingers faltered, and I couldn’t hit the right notes when I normally could.

Velma could sense my nervousness and coached me about how to present myself when I would introduce what songs I would be playing.

She would exaggerate with a straighter posture than how she stood and look right at me as though I was the audience and she was me. “’I’m going to play Silent Night and then We Three Kings’!” She announced in such a bold voice that I wasn’t sure if I could vocalize with the same conviction.

When she did that, my confidence boosted. At the recital, my voice still shook when I announced my Christmas pieces to the audience, but still significantly less than I might have otherwise imagined. Sometimes when I picked up my tempo, my fingers still slipped and I struck a wrong note but I kept going like I planned that. The final year that I remember performing, Velma gifted me with a glass angel ornament with golden wings which I still have.

She showed that she valued the time that we had together with piano lessons. One time during the summer, I had caught a bad sore throat. My mom thought I shouldn’t attend my weekly Wednesday lesson, so Shay went without me. A few days later, I received a card in the mail from Velma. A treble G was printed in black on the gold card with some quarter and half notes. “Please get well soon,” she wrote. “Then we can make beautiful music together again!”

That thoughtful gesture went a long way. As a little girl, I loved to receive letters, and this was the one that meant the most. As I ruminate on these memories, I realize it is important to know what stories you allow others to tell you about yourself. For some reason, the Velveteen Rabbit, although he was ultimately thrown away in the trash, came back to visit the boy who once loved him. It can also be related to your passion; if you let others tell you how you should feel about it, it won’t be yours anymore. That’s what happened with me. While Velma wowed at my ability to memorize piano pieces within hours, my mom would listen to me play and compare me to a girl I knew at church.

“Katie would be playing circles around you!” is what my mom would always say.

Maybe as a parent, she meant well and wanted me to be the best. But to a little girl who is just learning who she is and developing her passions, that was crushing to constantly hear. That affected my spirit. One day, I realized I didn’t love playing the piano like I used to, even around Christmas.

So I quit.

Discovering Love

I mentioned how my dad was a storyteller. Although he doesn’t spend time typing his thoughts or imagination out on the computer, he tells stories from what happen at work. The stories sometimes seep in from the past or sometimes they recount his interactions with widely different characters from the day. The Velveteen Rabbit is one of those stories that has influenced my storytelling, even when I don’t realize it. It contributed to the ideas that accumulated when I was a teenager and spent hours writing down. In contrast to playing the piano, when you’re writing, no one can hear or see what you’re doing and judge you, unless you’re published.

I can’t speak stories to life like my dad can. But I can write the ideas down and form them into characters just as real as the people that my dad talks about.

I started writing just before I hit my teens and that was something that stayed with me. If I couldn’t play piano anymore, I felt like I had to find another creative outlet and stories had been part of my life for so long that I started to have my own ideas. Those ideas formed characters on pages and when I finished a story, I felt proud in that accomplishment. One Christmas, my cousin who briefly considered becoming a publisher one day, bound some of the stories I sent in emails into a hardcover. That solidified my vision and since then, I couldn’t give up my pursuit of seeing myself as a published writer someday. As I left my teens, my mom started asking me when I would put away childish things and grow up. She didn’t want me to continue writing but focus on what would attract a guy so that he would marry me young and I could have the happy life that she saw for me. But that imagined life, without anything else filling it, appeared empty, suffocating, and lonely.

Growing up, I had a tumultuous relationship with my mom. It wasn’t the worst mother-and-daughter relationship. But I sure felt like I could never please her and that I always had to be who she wanted me to be. That included giving up my writing and surrendering to the boring boxed life she wanted for me. That was no life to live.

At that point, I felt like she had taken so much away from me that I couldn’t let her have this, too.

So I kept writing, if not for anyone else, for myself. But I hoped that would become my future legacy. In my twenties into my early thirties, I would publish in local newspapers and magazines, but up to date, I haven’t published anything fictional…

Yet.

The Fairy Returns

In 2013, I worked at a coffeehouse called The Perky Parrot in my hometown which we had moved back to. I had come from the back from helping my coworker prepare some of the sandwiches for the lunch hour when I saw her.

Velma.

Her voice still floated like music notes when she spoke. “Do you still play the piano?”

I didn’t know what to tell her. I didn’t want to tell the truth and hurt her feelings, but I also know guilt would prick me if I lied. It would be like the time all over again when I had checked off how many times, I played the piano that week so she would reward me with candy from her bluish green basket. My dad had caught me lying about how many times I actually played and had me confess to Velma at my last lesson that I had cheated her out of her candy. I decided on a story that could be called nothing more than a half-truth. “Sometimes,” I said, after a long moment. I could feel the lump rising in my throat from that one word. In my mind, sometimes I had imagined myself playing in a private space or revisiting the memories of times that once brought me happiness. I hoped that one day I would have a piano or a keyboard again.

I don’t remember saying much after that, but although she had gotten older than what I remembered her being, the same spirit still possessed her. I’m sure she couldn’t play the piano herself anymore, but she was still full of the same cheer that kindled the music in her voice. I wanted to visit more with her. I may have gone over to her table once while she and her daughter were eating, but other customers quickly called my attention away again. Lunch time was hustle and bustle and when I wasn’t cashiering, I juggled and served espresso shots and lattes.

When a quiet moment arrived, I looked up. Velma was gone.

What Makes a Rabbit Real

Velma was one of those few people in my life who saw something in me and believed in me. While the work itself in whatever you choose is up to you, it helps when you have someone who believes in you. That’s what the wise old Skin Horse had told the Velveteen Rabbit about how the boy who spent time with him, transformed him into a real rabbit.

It isn’t about how you’re made, but what happens to you.

The same goes for what you love to do. While I don’t play piano anymore, I’ve learned that your love in what you do makes the work real. What is just as equally as important is finding and surrounding those characters like the Skin Horse and the Fairy who believe in you and support what you do.

That’s what makes you real, too.