Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and my sister Doris posted our mother’s picture with this comment:

Thinking of my mom and celebrating her on this Mother’s Day. She was the ultimate role model that I could never live up to– a pediatrician, mother of five, involved in church and community events, chauffeur to swim lessons, piano lessons, violin lessons, art lessons, grocery shopper and cook, etc etc. I’ll never forget the night she stayed up after a long day of work to sew a costume I needed for the next day’s performance. She never complained about being exhausted, and I learned from her the art of the power nap. Mommy, you are greatly missed!

I was thinking of what I would write, and I would have to say that the reason I am an organist today is because of my mother. She was my first piano teacher, when I was but four years old, but then she engaged an outside piano teacher when I was in first grade. She herself was an accomplished pianist and even won a piano in a competition, which she donated to her school. But when she went to college, she decided to study medicine instead.

Some sixty years later, when she retired as a pediatrician at age 83, she returned to playing the piano, and even took up the harp when she saw an infomercial about it. She engaged a piano teacher (in addition to a harp teacher), and began practicing three hours a day. When she turned ninety, we held a grand dinner party with about 140 guests. The program consisted of 17 members of the family playing a concert, with the highlight being her performance of a three-movement Mozart sonata in a piano duet she played with her young piano teacher.

When I was thirteen, I had been taking piano lessons from the time I was four years old, and I found piano playing to be a “drag!” I never practiced anyway, and sightread all my lessons, as did my two sisters—all of us were “blessed” or “cursed” with perfect pitch and able to sightread just about anything.

The three of us collectively went to our parents and announced that we were QUITTING!

After a few moments, my mother suggested that instead of quitting music altogether, that we all take up different instruments. That was when I switched to the organ, fell in love with the King of Instruments, and the rest is history. (My sisters both switched to the violin.) So I have to credit my mother for me becoming an organist. Thanks, Mother!

Fast forward to the year 2020 and now I’m the mother and grandmother who gets presents on Mother’s Day from my son and grandson.

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!