<\/p>\n
Life Lessons<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In high school I switched to Sue’s piano teacher, Miss Ward.<\/p>\n She took the El and a taxi to our houses, luckily<\/p>\n only two blocks from each other. Then she took a taxi<\/p>\n and the El back home. Even then I knew it was an unmerciful life.<\/p>\n Possibly our pieces, our Chopin and Bach and Debussy,<\/p>\n showed we were advanced students, but not<\/p>\n if you listened to us. And Miss Ward had to listen.<\/p>\n It was her job. My father had to mend and stitch clothes,<\/p>\n line seams up just so, add pockets and collars and pleats.<\/p>\n A tailor was steps up from a horse trader, his father’s work.<\/p>\n I didn’t bother with the niceities of music, eschewing<\/p>\n counting, rhythm, legatos, staccatos. To me<\/p>\n mere possibilities, whether to consider or not<\/p>\n at my discretion. My mother said, I don’ know<\/p>\n how she makes any money at all, with the taxis and the El.<\/p>\n I felt bad then, not for my indifferent playing–<\/p>\n I thought I passed the bar, but just by a hair–<\/p>\n but for a hardscrabble life, the endless rounds,<\/p>\n a tiny elderly woman wearing nylons and sensible stout shoes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Life Lessons In high school I switched to Sue’s piano teacher, Miss Ward. She took the El and a taxi to our houses, luckily only two blocks from each other. Then she took a taxi and the El back home. Even then I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1822,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1822"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94342,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94053\/revisions\/94342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}