So, we moved a couple weekends ago. And while the new house has quickly taken shape, Rick and I are bent out of it. As I regaled all our many former moves in my last post, I honestly thought I was ready for this one.

I wasn’t.

It’s not that we didn’t have everything packed. It’s wasn’t that I wasn’t ready to feed our hard-working crew on Saturday – I got up early to start the crockpot of hot dogs that is part of our moving tradition. (Because, as I told my sister-in-law, we have moved enough to have a moving tradition.) It’s just that we didn’t factor in that we are older and therefore the recovery from moving a mere 6 blocks west was going to take a couple chiropractors, massage therapists and a lot of time.

Another hazard of getting older: moving beyond the typical IKEA cardboard furniture. This genre of house furnishings remains popular despite the wordless and sometimes fruitless instructions that accompany its assembly. It’s cheap(ish) and usually light and therefore, easy to move. But what we noticed this time is that alas! we had invested in some actual wood furniture since the last move. And wood can be, well, heavy.

And then, there was the piano. The move to our former house eleven and a half years ago pretty much also marks the beginning of our three boys’ musical careers. We already had purchased a keyboard in 2007 when the Radio Shack here in town – a.k.a. L&K Television – shut down. Piano lessons with the amazing Luis Guarnica started soon after in September and by December, he had them playing Christmas carols.

And then some friends were moving away to a temporary location and asked: Would we store their piano for them? Storing: meaning in our living room where three young men could plink away on it daily. It was a win-win situation. Until they wanted their piano back.

And so, it was back to the Radio Shack special.

That year, at music festival, the astute adjudicator, after listening to the boys play their pieces, commended their efforts but then called out to the crowd, wanting her remark to land on my ears: “Mom, these boys need a real piano.”

It was our luck that my ears weren’t the only listeners. A lady from our church heard this message as well. And so it was that a few nights later, we got a phone call from Bill, who summoned us to visit him in the hospital. Would we, he asked, be interested in “hanging on” to his late wife’s piano for awhile? And so “Margaret” – named for her former owner – came live at our house.

Just say the words “move a piano” and you can quickly clear a room. Pianos are just heavy. And awkward. And big. It usually requires a lot of muscle, followed by a lot of pizza afterwards. Margaret signified the end of the move as it was the last thing to go a couple weekends ago, when she went to live with two of the boys in their home in Edmonton. After all, Rick and I only know how to play the radio – it made much more sense for the piano to be where the music makers live.

And so our rural piano moved to the big city, took a trip up an elevator and hopefully will live there for at least another eleven and a half years. Which should be enough time for all of us to forget how hard it is to move a dang piano. Even one with a disarming name like Margaret.