I could complain about this being scuba season, but you’ve probably had enough of that. 

So I won’t tell you I’m unraveling because I’m scuba diving tomorrow. 

Or that my daughter is attending scuba camp next week. 

Or that she’s scuba diving in Topsail, where a shark attacked a swimmer three weeks ago. 

It’s fine. Fine. We’ll all be fine. 

I’m doing everything I can to prepare.  

Practicing the setup of my scuba kit. Reading my 42 pages of notes. Watching Jaws 3-D. 

So I won’t trouble you with the scuba fears you know so well. 

We’ll talk about my piano instead. 

In my adult life, I have adopted two dogs, two cats, two crayfish, two hamsters, one guinea pig, and one piano. 

When my daughter was a grade schooler with three or four years of piano under her belt, having a piano in our home was a logical step. 

I recalled an article I’d read once, about a website facilitating piano adoptions between people looking to rehome their pianos and people wanting a piano. 

The website had a piano living with an elderly couple in Feasterville. Their daughter played for years.  

But she was grown. Out of the house. The couple no longer wanted the responsibility or space consumption of an old piano. 

Which is almost identical to the story of the first dog I adopted. 

I thought adopting this piano was a nice idea — passing it from their daughter’s hands to my daughter’s hands. Like Woody and Buzz in Toy Story 3. 

I imagined the elderly couple sending the piano off with tears and goodbyes to their daughter’s childhood. Little memories, traipsing out the door to a stranger’s home. 

So I assured them we would love the piano, that my daughter would play and play and play, that their daughter’s piano would usher a new generation of pianists into the world. 

“Yeah. Sure,” they said. 

Which is almost identical to what the shelter said when that first dog I adopted died six months after I adopted her. 

I only adopt elderly pets. It’s sort of my thing. 

We made space in our living room for the piano. Eventually, my son’s drum kit and my daughter’s flute joined the adopted upright.  

I started referring to the living room as the conservatory. I made jokes about Colonel Mustard murdering Mr. Body with the lead pipe.  

Sometimes, I’d play the piano myself. I don’t know the keys’ notes or what the pedals do, but I can play “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound of Music and, with enough time, the theme song to North and South. 

Starring the love of my life, Jonathan Frakes. 

Later, when we adopted our beagle, he sat beside the piano as my daughter played, howling in what I’m sure he thought was perfect harmony. 

His howls rattled the skin of the drums. Together, the piano, the howling, and the vibrato of the drums created quite the cacophony. 

Then AP work and work work and general teen life made piano lessons harder and harder to schedule.  

We decided piano lessons were done. I cried when I told the piano teacher. 

The piano remained, despite the defunct lessons. It hosted the picture of my grandmom and my stuffed Santa at Christmas. I still played the theme song to North and South. I still thought of Jonathan Frakes – even though he’s kind of a tool in North and South. 

But in twenty-six days, my former pianist leaves for college. The conservatory has tried for so long to revert to living room status. It overflows with sofas and tables and work shoes and school assignments.  

It’s like The Hulk, trying to revert to Bruce Banner. 

I decided to rehome the piano. To let another daughter Lady Gaga her way through elementary school. To let my own little memories traipse out the door into someone else’s home.  

The website I used to adopt the piano has, I discovered, vanished.  

Pianos, it seems, are not as popular as they used to be. The evolution of society has made them as vestigial as the appendix.  

When people can’t rehome their pianos, they repurpose them into bars or kitchen islands. 

Yeah. 

They just look like repurposed pianos. 

People destroy them, in places like this rage room in York. 

People throw them away. 

I — I can’t bring myself to do any of those things. 

I found two organizations looking to adopt pianos. 

They, um, turned me down. 

And I was relieved.  

I think the piano is sad. Sad to go to yet another home. It likes my grandmom. It likes my stuffed Santa. It likes North and South. It maybe even likes Jonathan Frakes. 

Is that weird? Personifying my piano? Assigning sentience where it can’t exist? 

I don’t know. But I’m also terrified to scuba dive tomorrow and that’s happening in a pool. So I think the weird train left the station a long time ago. And I was in first class. 

My husband and I agreed we wouldn’t put the piano out with the trash or send it to a rage room. We’d only give the piano to a loving family with budding pianists.  

Until then, the piano stays.