<\/p>\n
By the time this column is in print, I should have completed a mission I set out to accomplish this summer.<\/p>\n
Truth be told, I set out to do the same mission last year \u2014 and a similar version of it the year before that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And maybe even the year before that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This summer, finally, I\u2019ve put my full effort into accomplishing this goal \u2014 and I may have aimed too high. Still, the train is on the track and should arrive Sunday morning at my church.<\/p>\n
I plan to play a song on the piano during the offertory. Our church’s choir takes time off in the summer, and the church invites members to sign up for a Sunday. Back in May, August seemed like a long time away \u2014 plenty of time to learn to play a song.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
After all, I was a good piano player.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Turns out, the emphasis should be on the past tense of that verb in the preceding sentence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Piano and I go way back. I took lessons every week of school from third through 10th grades. After that school year, my mom had a baby. My dad became a high school principal, and we moved from our longtime town. My piano lessons went by the wayside.<\/p>\n
But during those eight years I took lessons, my parents didn’t believe in simply paying for piano lessons, which\u00a0meant I had to practice every day for at least 30 minutes, preferably an hour.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, I loved to play the piano and enjoyed my time practicing (at least for most songs). Then, there were also recital duets with my cousin, solo pieces and state contests.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
During most weeks of those years, I played the piano or took lessons at least seven hours. However, in the more than four decades since, I doubt I have played the piano a total of seven hours cumulatively.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That is, until this summer.<\/p>\n
Finding the time and place to practice piano has been such an interesting process. The first challenge was in finding the right song to play. After eight false starts, I decided on something I\u2019d once played well. I remembered a beautiful song I played in middle school called “The Homecoming” by Hagood Hardy.<\/p>\n
It’s a song that used to touch my heart all those years ago. I still remember the color blue of its cover. Sometimes sitting at the piano in my family’s living room, the chords struck so right that it felt like the real-life version of “the songs that make the young girls cry,” just like Barry Manilow used to sing about.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Growing up, I played “The Homecoming” as often as I could and imagined the nostalgia of coming home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After multiple failed attempts to locate the exact arrangement I\u2019d played back then, I finally found it \u2014 just a month before my turn for the special music.\u00a0Practice began in earnest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Muscle memory is real, and some elements of the piece came back immediately. As I played the piece repeatedly, I remembered specific chords my middle school piano teacher, Mrs. Hayes, loved.<\/p>\n
I remember how easily the song used to be to play \u2014 so smooth. Nothing about getting it right this time has been easy or smooth.<\/p>\n
When I sit down at the piano this weekend, my fingers may fumble and my timing may drift \u2014 but I will be there, just as I was so many years ago, doing something I once loved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The exercise of practicing this song all these years later has been a bit like time travel. It\u2019s been a reminder of that feeling of a teacher sitting beside me, looking over my shoulder, and how hitting the wrong notes sent a jarring sensation down to my toes.<\/p>\n
The song is just as lovely as I remembered. Even in my imperfect playing, those beautiful moments still shine. These days, I don’t have a piano at home. So, every time I see one, I take a moment to give my best effort toward this song I loved as a seventh grader.<\/p>\n
And the music carries me back again and again.<\/p>\n
So, in case you are somewhere and hear an occasionally hesitant version of a beautiful song, know that I very well may be the one on the piano bench, smiling like a middle schooler who\u2019s just found her way home to her favorite chord.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By the time this column is in print, I should have completed a mission I set out to accomplish this summer. Truth be told, I set out to do the same mission last year \u2014 and a similar version of it the year before that.\u00a0 And maybe even the year before that.\u00a0 This summer, finally, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1965914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1965913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Louisiana-notes-Relearning-piano-and-coming-home-Risher-EntertainmentLife.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1965913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1965914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1965913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1965913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1965913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}