When I was five years old, I begged my parents to let me take piano lessons. No one else in the family was interested in the massive, old upright piano sitting in our living room. A converted player piano, I may have been as interested in the piano at that time—with its doors above the keyboard opening into a hollow space—as a potential hiding place, as I was in actually playing it. But once I started lessons, I fell in love with making music. For a few years, I was a dutiful student, practicing and playing only what the teacher had instructed me to play. That is, until I learned I was a good sight reader. After that, there was no reasoning with me. I became rebellious, my practice sheets filled with zeroes. I wanted to play what I wanted, how I wanted.

The same pattern occurred when at the age of nine I started playing the alto saxophone. I loved the instrument and loved playing with others, but I had no interest in practicing. Despite that, for the next ten years, there were few days I didn’t lug that heavy (for a little girl anyway) saxophone in its battered case to school. I played in jazz bands, laboratory bands, concert bands, marching bands, and small ensembles for school musicals. At the time, I couldn’t have imagined not playing the saxophone, but when I graduated from high school, I didn’t seek out opportunities to play with other musicians. The saxophone remained in its case, a mute reminder of having abandoned something I’d once loved.

Unlike the saxophone, I didn’t abandon the piano and played well into my adult life. I continued to accompany small groups and choirs, mostly in church settings, something I’d done from an early age. For many years, I played the piano every day. The first major purchase I made as a young woman was a small Baldwin upright I bought when I was only twenty. I was enormously proud of it. When, a few years later, I found a 1923 baby grand in excellent condition in a thrift store in Omaha, Nebraska, I bought it and sold my Baldwin upright.

For purely sentimental reasons, I kept my saxophone beside the piano; its presence caused me a continual, low-level guilt. When my friend Vania left the States for her native Sao Paolo and told me she was planning to buy a saxophone and take lessons from her father, a professional saxophonist, in Brazil, I knew my saxophone belonged with her, that it deserved to be played again, and I urged her to take it with her when she left, to relieve me of my own sense of its abandonment.

With time, my career and family obligations became more demanding, and I played the piano less and less. It happened gradually, but eventually, the piano sat, its keys uncovered, for months at a time. When my husband and I decided to put a wood-burning stove in our living room, it was clear to me the best place for it was where the piano was sitting. My husband protested, but I felt my own neglect for the instrument like a form of abuse and sold it to a family with four young children, all of whom were taking piano lessons.

I went a few more years without a musical instrument, and, quite frankly, without much urge to acquire one. Occasionally, I had mentioned learning to play the accordion, admiring its portability and thinking (stupidly) that its similarity to the piano might make it easier for me to learn to play. When four years ago my husband surprised me with a vintage Italian Contini, it was beautiful but completely mystifying. I could understand the right-hand keyboard, but the chording buttons on the left baffled me, and I couldn’t seem to solve the mystery of those buttons on my own. After balking at lessons when I was a kid, I now sought out and found a teacher in my Boston neighborhood. David—aka Davey the Clown—a professional clown, trained at San Francisco’s famous Dell’Arte school, someone who can play the accordion while also riding a unicycle or balancing a stick with a spinning plate on his chin. David helped me figure out not only the chording aspects of the instrument, but the correct way to attack those buttons to achieve the traditional accordion accompaniment. He helped with the fit and taught me the correct way to hold the instrument. He taught me how best to approach a new piece of music.

When I stopped taking lessons, David urged me to continue to practice my scales, which are the key to versatility in playing with other musicians and true accomplishment on an instrument. I remember looking at those scales as he handed them to me, and feeling a familiar rebellion. Some habits never change. What had changed was realizing how much I’d missed playing an instrument. I’m a baby accordionist and I only practice erratically, but despite not practicing my scales, I continue to push myself to greater complexity and better technique. I continue to risk looking a fool (you wouldn’t take up accordion if you wanted to look cool, right?) for my own satisfaction with no intentions other than to play for my own enjoyment, and to join other amateur musicians when those opportunities arise.

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Listen to Ladette play “A Bicycle Built for Two” here:

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