The service counter guy at the hardware store understood what he was looking at as soon as he saw the screw. “This is from some old, special chair,” he told my wife when she stopped in on Monday.
Right. A chair with a special story that, I suggest, speaks to some of the core aspects of what can lead a child to a successful life.
My father was a very talented pianist as a child. In his early teens, he soloed with the Madison symphony, playing Gershwin’s Concerto in F. He loved piano and he had great potential.
My grandparents ran a corner grocery store near the University of Wisconsin campus. They and their five children lived in a small apartment over the store. This was the mid-1930s, the height of the Depression, so you know they didn’t have much.
One afternoon, my father came home from high school, climbed the stairs, and, as he tells the story, nearly fell to the floor. A Steinway grand piano was sitting in the living room.
Can you imagine the sacrifice my grandparents made to get that piano? That’s how important their children were to them. That’s how much they wanted to do all they could to help their children reach their potential and have a good life.
And those children did have good lives. They graduated from high school. They went to college. They worked, they married, and they were good citizens of communities as big as New York City, as small as Two Rivers. Each in his or her own way did well.