Grandma

On January 15th of this year, my 84-year-old grandmother had a massive stroke that severely affected the left side of her body.  Most people in that condition don't recover, but then again, most people aren't Ruth Volkert Kratzke.  If Little Red Riding Hood were visiting my grandmother, the girl would arrive to a home filled with the aroma of a blackberry pie that made her basket of sweets look like hardtack, broiled tenderized wolf with three sides, a printed menu, and not one drop of blood on the floor.  She probably does not own a tenderizer.

Grandma and I have a few things in common, such as an underdeveloped sense of patience and an overdeveloped sense of when it's appropriate to be insulting.  Generally speaking, the notion of considering another point of view when it comes to just about anything is unheard of.  Oh, yes.  And we both chose a career in piano.  It shouldn't be hard to imagine that we haven't always gotten along.

For the past few months, I've been trying to take a little time out of the teaching day to give her a call and play something short and fairly sight-readable.  The arrangements are nothing special, and it's sort of stupid to try transmitting 88 sets of vibrating strings over a telephone.  Despite this, she seems to look forward to hearing whatever happens on her end of the call.  I tried ringing one time just to talk to her, and the phone was promptly hung up.  She really just wanted to hear me play, so then I had the idea to do start some postings.  You know, just in case somebody out there might like to hear a little easy piano music from somebody else's granddaughter.

"Crown Him with Many Crowns" in the setting of Bach's Prelude in D Major

Arr. Cindy Berry