January 8
This is the story of a guitar.
A cheap, unassuming guitar.
A guitar purchased by justifiable doubtful parents almost 16 years ago for a 15 year old girl who was SO SURE she wanted to learn to play. She was positive she could teach herself. She got right down to business with the lovely guitar that day, and learned a few chords.
The girl never learned a single song on that guitar.
So it stayed in the girl’s room looking positively cool, but doing nothing than collecting dust until the girl met a boy.
A boy whom would visit on occassion and every time he did, he would pick up the guitar. The boy could play.
The boy would play songs he wrote about the girl.
The girl grew up and married the boy and guitar became more than just a teenage decoration.
It became a real live actual instrument through which many good (and some not so good) songs were created.
The girl and boy had children. Wild, crazy, children who loved the guitar when it made such wonderful sounds in the hands of the boy. The children were positive they could make equally lovely sounds.
The children loved that cheap guitar to pieces.
Literally.
The girl suggested they lay the guitar to rest.
In the garbage can.
But the boy who loved the cheap, unassuming guitar, not for its great cost or craftsmanship, but for the memories it held had, could not see it go.
He fixed the old guitar and he lovingly placed it on a special hanger in his bedroom.
And Every night he played it.
Every night still.
Every night he takes it down, if only for a moment to calm a crying baby or distract a 3 year old from tantrum, or to teach a 9 year old a chord, or to sing a lullaby to a sleepy eyed 7 year old. And the girl watches.
She watches
and she loves
the guitar
and the boy
and the small children
and the parents
who have all been such big pieces
of a life she cherishes.
