on realizing dreams come true
A little less than twenty years ago, I got my first paying gig playing services at a little white Methodist church in the neighboring village of Williamstown, Vermont. Like most church gigs, I had to prepare some preambulum and postlude music, as well as a number of assigned hymns, usually no more than four or five. The pay was $40 for the hour. Not bad for a twelve-year-old.
I practiced for these services all week, terribly nervous for what felt like a high-stakes performance. My mom, overhearing flubbed chords and wrong notes, would remind me about the seriousness of my new role. “You can’t make any mistakes on Sunday,” she would say. “This isn’t like a lesson.” Knowing she was right, I practiced harder.
All in all, the gig lasted about a month. Though I don’t remember any real disasters, maybe the congregation still sensed my nerves as they manifested in shaky rhythms, unintended dissonances and false starts. I was, after all, learning the ropes. “So I play the last line of the hymn first, and then the congregation sings?”
I distinctly remember one time, maybe my last time, when the minister sprang a new hymn on me at the last minute. I froze. I didn’t know what to do. My piano teacher, who scored me the gig in the first place and who (astonishingly) came to each service I played, swooped in to the rescue. Maybe he came for exactly this reason, to help in the event of an emergency.
He sat at the upright and played the hymn without hesitation. Perfectly. I watched in awe. How did he do that? He played it better at first glance than I could have if I’d had all week.
On the drive home, in a dark-hued state of disbelief, I said to my mom from the passenger seat, “I can’t believe he could just look at the hymn and play it like it was nothing.”
"He’s been playing piano for a long time, Adam," she said with the tender yet unbudging tone she’d no doubt learned to adopt whenever I sank into one of my self-deprecating funks.
"I wish I could sight read a hymn that."
"Well," she said, "someday you will."
