35 years…
The first guitar I ever picked up belonged to my father. I can’t remember for certain, but I don’t think he even knew how to play a single chord on it, tune it, or why he had it. The image of it is clear to me today… pale yellow spruce top, back and sides stained the same color you might find on a mid-western deck, fake ivory tuning pegs worn and cracked with age and use (disuse), braided yellow and red string as a substitute for a strap.
It was, as you might imagine, too big for me. My hands, spider-fingered, calloused, and strong as they are now, were tiny and weak then, and couldn’t reach all the way around the neck to form a full circle. When I sat with it on my lap, it nearly dwarfed me. It’s body was bigger than mine, and the top of it rubbed against my chin, and my arm would fall asleep, sometimes, from the pressure that was laid against it. The size and scale of what lay ahead of me were an unknown, but were a challenge that I ran to willingly and without reservation.
But, from that first conversation the guitar and I had, I knew this was going to be… me. The guitar and I were going to dance to our own music for… ever….
My parents, and for this will I be eternally grateful, recognized this. I had my first lesson at the age of five. It was at the instructor’s house, and it was for a group of children. I was the youngest in the class, and had the greatest struggle ahead of me. My brain and body were still ill-formed with the burden of youth, and the instructor even counselled my parents to hold off on continuing lessons until I was older. But, that first chord I made, that D major– when I fit my first, second, and third fingers into their appropriate places on the first and second frets, and strummed– that moment still sings to me in my sleep.
When I was eight, the lessons began again. My parents had bought me my own guitar by this point, a red and yellow sunburst model with a floral design in the pickguard that my boy brain hated. At the time, I was in third grade at Edgebrook Elementary School in McHenry, and one of the fourth grade teachers, Mrs. S. gave group lessons after school on Wednesdays. We lived on the opposite side of a golf course from the school, and although I could have ridden the bus, my brother and I walked. Those Wednesdays were always a battle of will, lugging that guitar to and from school in its hard plastic case with its elephant skin textured outside that weighed half as much as I did. To save money, I used guitar picks that my father cut out of old credit cards. I continued to take lessons from Mrs. S. until the end of fifth grade.
Years later, I stopped by to see Mrs. S. at her home. I was mostly an adult by this time, and after a time spent catching up on our pasts, she handed me one of her guitars and asked me to play. The look on her face… the pride, the recognition of my joy and passion… it was the most effective way I knew of to thank her. She passed away not too long after this, and I hope she knew what she had done for me.
My favorite guitar hangs next to me, right now. It has pick scratches and chips in the finish, the frets are worn down and need to be replaced– it has mojo. In the last thirteen years it has seen countless hours of practice and gigs with me, and the relationship I have developed with it is intimate on a scale that most people I know couldn’t rival. My hands have been on it during the best and worst moments of my life.
Every second of those 35 years (and counting), I knew.
