Confessions of a Wedding Musician Mom

by Jennifer McCoy Blaske

  I suspected that we were not dealing with a true professional when my daughter and I met with Ms. Hershey for a consultation and she not only brought along her two unruly children, but spent most of the time unsuccessfully attempting to discipline them. Unfortunately, my suspicions were confirmed when Ms. Hershey’s phone went off during the ceremony and ruined the special moment for myself, my daughter, and all our guests. As if that weren’t enough, her music went flying off the piano during my daughter’s entrance, creating a huge spectacle and embarrassing us all.

  Unfortunately, there was more. My stomach tightened and I started feeling dizzy. I put my hand on the edge of the counter.

  I urge anybody hiring a wedding pianist to not make the same mistake we did, and to be sure to hire somebody who is professional and has plenty of experience – neither of which is true about Heather Hershey.

  I took a few steps toward the kitchen table. It felt like I was moving in slow motion. I sank into a chair and buried my head in hands.

  This horrible, sick feeling felt distinctly familiar. For a few seconds I couldn’t figure out why, but then it was obvious. It felt like I was right back in that small room almost fifteen years ago …

  * * *

  “You don’t have to, Heather,” Dr. Adams said gently. “You’re welcome to finish the year with us and see if you pass your sophomore technical exam. But … it might be, well … easier for you to start thinking about other options now.”

  My throat tightened so much that I felt like I could barely breathe, never mind speak. I watched my hands trembling in my lap.

  I knew what this was all about. Yesterday morning I’d played Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in D Major and had a complete memory glitch during the fugue. I kept getting stuck and circling back to the same spot until I finally gave up and just finished the piece and walked off the stage.

  It was embarrassing, but I wasn’t expecting this. I sat studying my trembling hands.

  “I know this is a lot to take in,” said Dr. Adams. “Why don’t we go ahead and skip your lesson today? Just relax and take some time to think about it. You don’t need to make any decisions right now. The registrar’s office will let you fill out the change of degree application at any time.”

  I might have mumbled a thank you as I gathered my books and stumbled out of the room. I made my way down the hall to the nearest bathroom and checked to make sure it was empty before I locked myself in a stall and sobbed.

  A week later I filled out the application to change my major to business. I chose business because it sounded both practical and like the polar opposite of piano performance.

  After that, I never set foot in the music building of Johnston College ever again.

  * * *

  I looked down. My hands were trembling on the kitchen table.

  “What am I going to do?” I whispered. “Everybody who looks for a wedding pianist on Wedding Wild is going to see this. No one will ever call me again. It’s over … I barely even started, and it’s over.”

  Steve walked over to the table and sat down next to me.

  “Can you delete your profile?” he asked quietly.

  I let my hands slide into my lap, then stared in a daze at a spot of peeling wallpaper. “I guess …” I mumbled. “But what’s worse, not being listed at all, or having a listing that says awful things?”

  I went to bed early that night and didn’t take the sub job I was called for the next morning. I deleted my Wedding Wild profile and stayed in my pajamas until 11 a.m.

  I finally got showered and dressed. I sat down on the piano bench. Instead of playing, I just sat there and stared at the keys. I had no desire to play. I had no desire to do anything. After sitting there for several minutes, I put away my music, closed the lid, and tucked in the bench.

  I grabbed the TV remote and flopped down on the couch. I stayed there for the next two hours.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Over the next few weeks I found myself taking on more substitute teaching jobs. Pretty soon I was working almost every day.

  The more I did it, the easier it became—although some classes were bumpier than others. I got to know a few of the kids’ names, and I was figuring out how to get their attention and keep things moving along. Most importantly, I learned that a roomful of kids with nothing to do was the kiss of death for a substitute teacher. So I compiled a big binder of word searches, crossword puzzles, and other worksheets that I could whip out if necessary.

  Some days I was bored out of my mind, like the day I sat through a science documentary about organelles and mitosis five times. But some days were a little fun, and luckily, I never had silent lunch duty again.

  One day a sixth grade class had to read a couple chapters of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and answer questions about it. I took the liberty of reading the chapters out loud and discussing the questions with the class. I guess the years of reading to Danny and Angela made me pretty good at it, because I managed to hold everybody’s attention the entire time. Of course, that could’ve just been because it was a good book.

  Nonetheless, over the next several weeks I slipped into a fairly decent—although not terribly satisfying—routine, and the extra money was a big help. I had no intention of being a substitute teacher for the rest of my life, but at the same time, I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to go from there.

  In the back of my mind I kept thinking that I should return to playing the piano every day, or start sending out business cards to local wedding venues, or just look up the date of The Madison Wedding and Event Professionals’ next meeting and mark it in my calendar. But for whatever reasons, I never did any of those things.

  One week really stood out. I spent Monday subbing for a PE class—and mostly standing around while the other PE teacher led the kids in shooting baskets or doing laps around the gym. On Tuesday I subbed for a French class and was pretty useless the few times a kid had a question about conjugating verbs. And on Wednesday I was asked to cover for the chorus teacher.

  There was a plain but decent-looking upright piano in the front of the classroom. I thought about playing it for a few minutes before the kids showed up, but the idea made me feel tired and a little depressed. I knew it was going to be another unremarkable day of sitting in the back of the room, doing little more than basic crowd control. So I just focused on getting everything ready.

  Mrs. Caldwell, the chorus teacher, left a DVD for me to show all the classes. It was a bunch of Bugs Bunny cartoon shorts set to classical music. I knew it would probably do a better job of keeping the kids’ attention than the DVD about organelles, but it wasn’t long enough to take up the entire period. I headed to the teachers’ workroom and made a lot of copies of a musical terms word search that I’d found the night before.

  Thankfully, I was right about the kids enjoying the cartoons and the morning went by pretty much as expected. I watched Elmer Fudd dressed up as a Viking over and over again, but I also managed to read a few pages of my book about a ditzy British woman with a shopping addiction. There were only two times during the entire morning that I had to be a correctional officer—which was better than most days. I had to ask one student to be quiet and another to stop kicking the chair in front of him.

  I had the seventh grade girls’ chorus for fifth period. When the DVD was finished I started passing out the word searches.

  “Why do we have to do a word search?” asked a girl in the back row. “This is chorus. Why can’t we sing?”

  “Because we have a sub, so we have to do busywork!” someone called back.

  “So what?” said the first girl. “We can sing without Mrs. Caldwell. Can’t we sing Mrs. Sub Lady? Please?”

  She had a point. It didn’t matter if they did the worksheets or not, and if they sang, that would keep them happy for the rest of the period. “Well … I guess, if you want.”

  The girl wasted no time. She grabbed a black folder from under her chair, leaped out of her seat, and rushed to the front of
the room. “All right everybody,” she said, pulling a piece of music out of the folder and setting it on the podium, “we’re all going to sing ‘Hine Ma Tov.’ ” She clapped her hands a couple times. “Okay, ready? Go!” she said, waving her arms in the air twice.

  With some amusement, I realized that she was like an older version of Angela.

  There were about three different starting pitches and at least two different tempos. The class fumbled the first two lines of the song before fizzling out.

  “What’s our starting note, Jill?” someone called out.

  “It’s this … hmmmm!” Jill hummed. “Ready? Go!” She flipped her fingers open at them like she was casting a magic spell.

  The second try wasn’t much better.

  “This isn’t working,” announced a girl in the front row as she slumped down in her seat. “Let’s just forget about it.”

  “No, come on.” Jill was getting frustrated. “You guys just aren’t paying attention.”

  “I don’t think that note is right,” someone else said. “It sounds too high.”

  A few girls started humming various notes. They all thought their note was the right one. It was almost painful to watch.

  The girls were eager to sing and they had nice voices, but they were totally lost. Jill, for all her passion and leadership skills, was only twelve and she didn’t know how to lead a chorus. They needed someone who could give them an intro, get them all in the right key, and start them off in a steady tempo.

  “Here, let’s try it again,” Jill said. “Ready? Go!”

  No one even bothered singing.

  “Jill, you can’t just yell go at us,” someone said. “You have to give us a beat.”

  These girls need someone who can play the piano, I thought.

  “At least I’m trying!” Jill snapped.

  A wave of anger washed over me, taking me completely by surprise. I was angry at my college professors for trying to get rid of me rather than helping me improve and be successful. I was angry at Grace Reese for being so negative and nitpicky that she felt the need to publicly insult me instead of having the decency to speak to me privately—or even just being gracious enough to be happy that her daughter was happy. But most of all, I was angry at myself. I was angry that I’d given up and wasted over a decade not doing what I loved just because of one incident and one person’s opinion. I was angry that I’d come so close to letting it happen again. And it was that very anger that fueled me to jump up from my seat and go to the front of the classroom.

  “Here, Jill,” I said, “let me have the music. I think I can help.”

  She handed me the music. Then she watched in wonder as I took it to the piano and sat down on the bench.

  “All right,” I called out, rolling a d minor chord all the way up the keyboard to get their attention. “I’m going to play the two measures before you come in, and I’ll nod right at your entrance, okay?” Without waiting for a response, I dove in and began playing.

  I didn’t play the song perfectly, of course. I had to leave out a lot of notes, and I missed the b flat a couple times. But I was able to keep a steady beat and give them the basic chord structure and a strong bass line which is all they really needed.

  By the time we’d finished, the looks on the girls’ faced were different. There was happiness at having been saved from boring busywork, but there was also something more. They no longer just saw me as the generic Substitute Lady who sat in the back of the classroom and played babysitter.

  “We didn’t know you played the piano,” one of them said.

  “You should sub for us all the time,” said another girl.

  Most of the girls were nodding in agreement.

  “Can we sing it again?” someone asked.

  We had time to run through it once more. When the bell rang they gathered their things and headed for the doors, several of them still singing as they left.

  “Bye Mrs. Hershey,” said Jill with a wave and a little skip as she headed out the door.

  “Yeah, bye Mrs. Hershey,” a few others called over their shoulders. “Thank you.”

  “Bye, girls,” I said. “You’re very welcome.”

  During sixth and seventh periods I didn’t even think about getting out the word searches. As the DVD was playing I borrowed someone’s chorus folder and flipped through the music. Then, when it was finished, I announced, “Now, for the rest of the period we’re going to sing through a couple of your pieces. Which one would you like to start with?”

  At the end of the day I left a note for Mrs. Caldwell. I told her what a wonderful day everybody had and how much singing we did. I happily headed out of the classroom and down the hall, whistling as I took out my car keys and twirled them around my index finger.

  I picked up Danny and Angela on the way home. Then, with a little help from Angela, I got right to work making spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. We even experimented a little by adding extra oregano and a tiny dash of Worcestershire sauce.

  After dinner, I adjusted my settings with the school system. I didn’t want to get any calls to sub the next day.

  Instead, I spent the day writing letters and mailing business cards and flyers to eight local wedding venues. Then I looked up the date of the next Madison Wedding and Event Professionals luncheon and marked it on my calendar.

  I also spent over two hours playing the piano. Because, of course, I had to practice a lot if I wanted to be a great wedding pianist.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Danny wandered into the kitchen one afternoon about a week later, just as the phone started ringing. “Can you make me some chocolate milk?”

  “Sure,” I said, opening the refrigerator door and snatching up the kitchen phone with my other hand. “Hello, Heather Hershey speaking.”

  “Hi Heather. My name is Kristen. I got your name from The Williams House, where I’m getting married this Saturday.”

  I swung the refrigerator door shut.

  “Mom! You said you were going to make me some chocolate milk!”

  “Hi Kristen,” I said, holding my hand up to silence Danny. “How can I help you?”

  “Mom!”

  I pulled Angela’s drawing of the ballerina-mermaid-unicorn tea party off the fridge and turned it around. I held the Be Quiet Please! side in front of Danny’s face for a minute before putting it down on the counter.

  “I know it’s really short notice,” said Kristen, “but our pianist fell and broke his wrist yesterday. Is there any way you could do it? The ceremony starts at five.”

  “Mom!” Danny said in a loud whisper.

  I bopped him on the head with Angela’s drawing.

  “Yes,” I said, “this Saturday is fine. I’d be happy to do it.”

  “You can?” she said. “Oh, thank you! I can’t wait to tell Erica, my wedding planner. We’ve been going crazy trying to figure out what to do.”

  Erica? I thought. “I’m sorry, who did you say your wedding planner is?”

  Danny went to the refrigerator. He pulled out the bottle of chocolate syrup and held it up. “Mom, is this the chocolate milk?”

  I nodded and shooed him away as I grabbed a pencil and pad from a drawer and went over to the kitchen table.

  “Erica Cantrell, from Magical Moments Event Planning” Kristen said. “Do you know her?”

  “We’ve met a couple times. I’m not sure if she would remember me, though.” In fact, I was hoping that she didn’t remember me.

  “She’ll be so happy to hear that I found you.”

  I hoped she was right.

  We chatted for a couple minutes and I wrote down all the details. Before we hung up, I said I’d touch base with her the day before the wedding.

  Wow, not just a wedding, but a wedding where I would actually be working with Erica Cantrell, I thought. If I did a great job and impressed her it could lead to all kinds of referrals and connections. On the other hand, if I didn’t impress her … I decided to try not to think about that.
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  Danny sat down next to me at the table. He was holding a blue plastic cup, making smacking sounds with his chocolate-smeared lips. “This is good chocolate milk. It’s really chocolaty.”

  I peeked in his cup. It contained nothing but a huge blob of chocolate syrup. “Danny! That’s not chocolate milk. That’s what you mix in the milk to make chocolate milk!!”

  He took another long sip and smacked his lips. “It’s good. You should make it like this all the time.” He took one last swig before wiping his face with his sleeve and bounding out the kitchen door.

  I rinsed his cup in the sink and put it in the dishwasher. I was about to leave the kitchen, but I paused. I glanced at the refrigerator. Eh, what the heck, I thought.

  I grabbed the chocolate syrup and squirted some into a mug. “Here’s to second chances!” I raised my mug of syrup in the air before chugging it down.

  Danny was right. It was good.

  * * *

  I’d done everything I could possibly think of to make sure the day would go well. I had a huge stack of music in my bag, and the book on the top of the stack had a piece of paper taped to the cover with a reminder to TURN OFF CELL PHONE! written in black marker. If the ceremony was delayed because the best man had to travel to the next state to fetch a forgotten ring, the piano music would play on. And I’d packed a little case with clips of different sizes.

  The Williams House was an old two-story mansion with huge white pillars in one of the most expensive areas of Madison. The wrought iron gates at the entrance led to a long gravel driveway that eventually curved around a fountain and garden area with a patio in front of the brick and wood building.

  I dropped my car off with the valet and walked past four white wooden rocking chairs on the patio. I opened the double beveled glass doors and stepped inside.

  The front lobby had a fireplace and a couple couches. I started down the hallway, passing huge paintings hung on the brick walls as the hardwood floors creaked beneath me.