I settle in my chair and open the book, chanter in hand. Practice time again, something I only do alone. The old game of my eyes telling my fingers what notes to play? I struggle to read the music, fingers finding the holes and flicking the grace notes. I can play the notes but can’t find the rhythm in them, their place on the sheet read, but their full meaning beyond me.

In grade school I somehow missed those days when tests were given to decide who should be in band or orchestra, who were the ones with musical ability. Those who were not selected for musical talent were relegated to the choir. So, later when others were pulling their instrument cases from under their seats or gathering them from the back of the room to head to practice I was one of those who went off to choir. We didn’t have instruments to carry to school each day or have to stay in from tag football after school to practice. Instead we spent our time standing side by side on risers learning songs with Latin words we didn’t understand for the Christmas program or childlike tunes about whatever season it was about to become.

I envied those kids who played instruments, who had shiny coronets or carried drum sticks around with them, tapping out complex rhythms on desks or the rail of the stairs when waiting for the bus. They had something special. They understood the mysteries of bow rosin and spit valves. They could claim to do something I couldn’t and carried around shiny black music cases like badges of honor to prove it.

It didn’t occur to me to learn an instrument on my own until later, when I saw the bagpipes being played in the park. Of course I had heard the pipes in movies and was always moved by their music, but I had never seen them or even had a thought that they were something I could learn. The concert was in the big concrete, faded green band shell in the park. (The shell was a fascinating place to us because we knew someone lived in a small apartment beneath it although we never saw any sign of activity. The three basement windows and the door window were always curtained off. It wasn’t until later that I learned from my father that a young police officer and his wife lived there without rent in exchange for patrolling the park at night, running off teen age drinking parties, necking couples, and the hoods who peopled the park after dark in the warm weather. I sat at the back of the crowd with my sisters, who had walked the three blocks to the park with me. When the concert was over I somehow got up the courage to ask one of the pipers how you learned to play the bagpipes. He told me about learning fingering on a practice chanter as the first step. Practice chanter. I memorized the words and for years would wander into the strange world of music stores, past the displays of pianos and organs to the back glass counters looking for anything that might be labeled a practice chanter. I was still too intimidated by the world of music to actually ask about such an instrument. Instead I would search the displays and find only reeds, harmonicas, and an occasional Jew’s harp or ocarina. Once or twice I would buy a harmonica and carry it around proudly in my back pocket for days, or playing Jingle Bells or Rain, Rain, Go Away, whichever tune came in the instructions. I never branched out to songs not on the instruction sheet. They were beyond my abilities. Finally the harmonica would wind up in the back of my drawer with single shoelaces, pop bottle caps, and old pocket knives. I never got very far with music. Still, I kept looking for a practice chanter.
It wasn’t until I was married that my parents, who had moved to Seattle, told me about a shop they had found that specialized in Scottish Imports. I had found a chanter. Since then I’ve learned a few songs by ear and played in a pipe band for a short while until my job moved our family. Now and then I bring out the chanter when I need to hear music that I can make myself. On very rare occasions I will bring out the pipes, in their shiny black case and unfold the mysteries of an instrument of my own. Carefully, I lift the pipes out and join the drones, checking the joints for tightness, waxing the hemp threading with a small pat of beeswax I keep in a battered brown box in the case. I replace the wax and remove the lump of jewelers polish and an old brown sock that I use to polish the nickel ferrules. Slowly, I rub the ferrules and the yellow oxidation gives way to the silver shine beneath. I fit the chanter into place and heft the bag under my arm. It bulges as I fill it and the drones give a squeal. A soft tap of the bag and the drones kick in, the chanter too. For a while I pace with the pipes, playing the songs I know. It’s a gift that I give myself, this music. Just like my practice, I don’t play for anyone else.
Seventeen years later time, in the form of arthritis and emphysema, has taken away the ability to play the pipes. They sit in their case in a back corner of the closet. I was never very good at them, but they were mine and I could make music.