Transparent Christian Magazine

My Grandfather’s email was brief and to the point: “The concertina is on its way. We tried to pack it carefully. Hope you enjoy it.”

My Grandpa John was sending me his concertina! What circumstance prompted this wondrous event? Which muse had inspired him? I suspected my mother, his daughter – she can often be accused of “muse-ing”! This was a great surprise! I had recently purchased a Bill Monroe CD that contained some of his earliest recordings, and I was surprised to discover that one of his original “Blue Grass Boys” was an accordion player. Kind of neat that my growing appreciation for non-traditional bluegrass instruments would be aided and abetted by the folks who first taught me piano music…

The concertina is kept in the sewing room – the area that’s part storage, part hallway between the daytime side and the nighttime side of the house. You can go from the kitchen to the bathroom, the master bedroom (if you’re allowed), Aunt Betsie’s room, or Uncle K.C.’s room – down a short hallway – all through Grandma’s sewing room. The room has built-in cupboards along one wall, painted a light green, and the sewing machine and counters along another wall. The all-red concertina sits on the counter – or is it the floor?

It’s been many years since I’ve seen the sewing room, and even longer since I’ve seen the concertina!

{Cue the set change; A few days later…}

“…oh, and Honey?” my wife says on the phone, “You got a package today. I’m not sure where it’s from. It’s a box.”

“How big is it?” I ask.

“Well, bigger than a bread box – or about the same size, really.”

My heart does a double beat. She’s calling from her cell phone, on her way home from shopping for snicker-doodle cookie supplies. I almost shout into the phone, “Well… open it when you get home!”

“Open it?” she asks. Stunned.

My comment is unusual. Nobody touches my mail OR my packages. It’s not that I receive anything private – just that the joy of discovery, like opening a letter or getting a CD or book from Amazon.com, or uncrating a marmoset from Australia – is something that my family and I treasure, and we respect each other’s stuff. I can’t wait another 4 hours to find out what’s in the box, though!

“Yeah, and tell me if it’s postmarked from Detroit. I’m expecting something from my grandfather.”

She called back 20 minutes later. “It’s like an accordion. It’s a concertina! And yes, it’s from your Grandpa Takacs.”

I’m thrilled. “What color is it? It’s red, right?” I say, always wanting my memories to be perfect.

“No, it’s, uh, maroon and wood… colored… it’s got red straps on it, though.”

So much for the clarity of my memories, I think. The sewing room was probably light blue. Oh, well.

“Describe it – does it have octagon shaped sides?”

No she says slowly, they are six-sided.

“That’s what I meant! Hexagon shaped sides. That’s what I meant. How many keys?”

“Oh, and there’s music, too. A learning guide. That’s probably as historical as the concertina,” she said appraisingly.

“Cool,” I say – I’ll certainly need some help learning how to play it! “How many keys?”

“Well, there’s… 9, 10, 11 on this side.”

11? Hm.

“And 10 on the other side.”

“Ah! One of the 11 is a ‘breather’ key,” I say, as I try to crawl through the twisted-pair copper wire and become the one holding onto the instrument. The phone is cradled in my ear and my hands are up in the air. A couple of passers-by think that I’ve become Italian, as I’ve suddenly struck the “Mama Mia” pose, and they pause for a moment, waiting for me to sing That’s Amoré. But I don’t sing, I just waggle my thumb. “Is the ‘11th’ key by your right thumb?”

I realize as soon as I say that – she could be holding it either way. Additionally, I have NO IDEA where the breather key is, nor if that’s the correct terminology for that button. PLUS… there may not even BE one, or it may not be offset by the thumb – I really am clueless about this instrument (except I would’ve sworn it was red). Ninety percent of everything is confidence, however, and you make your own karma, as the saying goes… she’s holding it exactly as I guessed.

“Why, yes , there is a key by my right thumb.”

I’m a concertina Jedi. The Force is obviously strong in me. The I-wanna-be-a-teacher-when-I-grow-up comes out. “Okay,” I say, “try holding that button down and moving the bellows in and out. It shouldn’t make a sound, because it’s the air-only key. Are you doing it? Is it just moving air? Don’t squeeze it together or pull apart without holding down that key. That’s what it’s for, so you can close it or open it without playing music at the same time…”

Dana’s concertina lesson lasted as long as she could stand it – about two minutes. Which felt to me like a nano-second. Boy, I couldn’t wait to get home! I asked her if there was any writing on it, any names? My grandfather’s family emigrated from Hungary many years ago, and I was thinking that I could look it up on the Internet and maybe find out how old it was and where it came from. I was imagining that the concertina had romanced Roma camps, or serenaded Slavs, or courted Kurdish Kings…

She said, “It says ‘Made in Italy’.”

Ooh, Italiano! “But is there a name on it?”

“Yes,” she said, now getting mildly frustrated with the 20 questions routine, “it says ‘John’. And it will be here when you get home from work.”

Click below to hear what a concertina sounds like!