For more than 10 years, I kept a painful secret. I told no one\u2014not even my wife, Ronda. The secret was my love of music. Not just listening. Playing. Making a living with my instrument. Closing my eyes and becoming one with a piece of music.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d done all of that once. After learning classical piano and trumpet as a child, I thought I\u2019d found my calling, playing around the world in the U.S. Army Band.<\/p>\n
It was a dream come true. Until I was abruptly discharged during the post\u2013Cold War drawdown of forces. The loss of my job came right as my second marriage was falling apart.<\/p>\n
I loved music and felt betrayed by all that happened. I\u2019d grown up in a military family. What would I do now? Crushed, I vowed never to play again. I returned my Army-issued trumpet and began a financial planning career.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t even tell Ronda about my musical past when we met and married years later. I kept things vague: \u201cI was in the Army nine years. Served in the first Iraq War. Honorable discharge from my last post in Fairbanks.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few years after marrying, Ronda and I were visiting my parents in Texas when my mom asked, \u201cPlay something for me, Brian.\u201d She still had the piano<\/a> I\u2019d played as a kid.<\/p>\n The request threw me. Mom had never taken an interest in my music. She and Dad didn\u2019t play and disliked classical and jazz. They certainly didn\u2019t approve of music as a career. They were relieved when I\u2019d put down the trumpet and found a \u201creal\u201d job. Mom hung on to the piano because she thought it made the house look respectable. I probably could have let her comment slide.<\/p>\n For some reason, I sat down at the keyboard. My fingers hovered over the keys, as if ready to play. A strange sensation came over me. I closed my eyes. Years of memory and longing gathered in my hands.<\/p>\n Why was this part of me so hard to forget? The family joked when I was growing up that my parents liked only two kinds of music: country and western. Nothing in my upbringing would have pointed toward a musical career. Piano lessons came from Mom\u2019s notions of respectability.<\/p>\n I was transported the first time I heard a classical music record that had been given to my dad by a military friend. Dad didn\u2019t want it, so I took it. Tchaikovsky\u2019s Piano Concerto No. 1 <\/em>was so romantic and dramatic. My joy was magnified when my teacher told me I could learn to play like that someday.<\/p>\n Our church denomination was conservative and frowned on instrumental music in worship. The more proficient I became playing Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven and Bach, the more I wondered if God approved.<\/p>\n My parents sure weren\u2019t enthusiastic, especially after my dad, a career military officer, was transferred to Okinawa, Japan. Unable to take our piano, I focused on trumpet and joined my high school band.<\/p>\n We returned to the United States, and I graduated high school and enrolled at Abilene Christian University. Mom and Dad insisted I major in music teaching, not performance. With $18,000 in mounting student loans, I perked up when a friend mentioned I could find work playing trumpet in the military.<\/p>\n A recruiter told me that not only could I start playing straight out of basic training but the Army would pay off my student loans and I\u2019d get to travel all over the world.<\/p>\n I left college without graduating and enlisted. It was just as the recruiter promised. I played for soldiers at bases, entertained officers at clubs and inspired crowds at ceremonial occasions.<\/p>\n My most solemn duty was playing taps at funerals. That\u2019s a trumpeter\u2019s job, and I never took it for granted.<\/p>\n The work truly was all over the world. My bandmates and I traveled constantly. I burned through two impulsive marriages and began to feel burned out myself as I neared a decade of service.<\/p>\n It was the relentless schedule, not the music, that ground me down. My job performance began to slip. I got a couple negative annual reviews.<\/p>\n Bad timing. In the mid-1990s, the military was drawing down. Guys with low job ratings were the first to go. Less than two years after arriving at an assignment in Fairbanks, I was discharged.<\/p>\n Suddenly jobless and alone on the frozen rim of the continent, I was shocked to discover that, in a way, my parents were right: There was little paid work for musicians in Fairbanks.<\/p>\n For a while, I drove a taxi and did odd jobs. Finally I admitted my musical dream was dead<\/a>. Maybe God really hadn\u2019t approved of the whole thing. It all felt so raw, so painful. I just wanted to forget. Never again would I let music break my heart.<\/p>\n By the time I started dating Ronda, it almost felt as if my life as a musician had never happened.<\/p>\n Which is why it made no sense that I responded to my mom\u2019s casual request by sitting down at the piano.<\/p>\n The score above the keyboard was the second movement from Beethoven\u2019s Sonata Path\u00e9tique. <\/em>A beautiful piece of music, one I\u2019d always loved. Could I play it now? Did I want to?<\/p>\n I lowered my fingers. The notes were clunky at first. I kept having to look at the score. Faster than I anticipated, the old feeling came back. My eyes closed. My fingers danced across the keys.<\/p>\n Lost in the music, I didn\u2019t notice Ronda standing at the doorway. I looked up. She gave me what I call the dreaded spousal stare, then turned away, shaking her head.<\/p>\n Flustered, I kept playing.<\/p>\n Ronda didn\u2019t mention it the rest of the trip, and I was too self-conscious to bring it up. Still, I kept catching her giving me \u201cthe stare.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do you keep looking at me like that?\u201d I blurted one morning back home in Alaska.<\/p>\n \u201cYou play piano!\u201d she exclaimed. \u201cHow come you never told me?\u201d<\/p>\n I mumbled something back about my playing days being a long time ago.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t even have a piano in the house,\u201d she interrupted. \u201cThat\u2019s just not right!\u201d Before I could reply, she got up and left the room. I sat there cupping my coffee, wondering whether she was mad.<\/p>\n Ronda said nothing more, though she continued to give me strange looks. They evolved from expressions of incomprehension to something closer to that of a parent keeping a secret before a birthday.<\/p>\n \u201cI ordered a piano,\u201d Ronda announced one day.<\/p>\n \u201cYou what?!\u201d I sputtered.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019ll take a couple months to get here though,\u201d she said. That was Ronda. Efficient, good-hearted and no-nonsense.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere\u2019d you get the money?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCoin jar,\u201d she said. For the past year, I\u2019d noticed her wrapping coins from our large coin jar. She\u2019d amassed $900.<\/p>\n The piano arrived just before Christmas. It was a Yamaha electric with weighted keys and settings for various keyboard instruments.<\/p>\n It was an unbelievably generous gift. It also scared the heck out of me. The piano at my parents\u2019 house was far away. I\u2019d played it, then left.<\/p>\n This piano was here in my house, challenging me. I couldn\u2019t walk away. If I played, I had to live with the results. What if that burst of inspiration at my parents\u2019 house had been a fluke? What if the old skill never came back?<\/p>\n I started tentatively at first, playing the keyboard a bit each day. I also told Ronda more about my musical past. What this instrument meant to me.<\/p>\n \u201cI wish you\u2019d told me earlier,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen they discharged you, it was military bureaucracy, not a judgment from God. There\u2019s no reason you shouldn\u2019t play as much as you want. Music is part of you.\u201d<\/p>\n I worked up to practicing an hour a day. Unable to resist, I bought a cheap trumpet online and dug out my old scores and handbooks.<\/p>\n Within a couple months, I was playing trumpet and piano as if I\u2019d never stopped. Ronda even unearthed a clarinet she\u2019d played in high school, and we would play together. Our house filled with music.<\/p>\n An old Army buddy of mine, another trumpeter, called me up. \u201cHeard you\u2019re playing again. About time. Listen, how would you feel about filling in for me at a rehearsal tonight? It\u2019s a community jazz orchestra. Big band stuff. You\u2019ll love it.\u201d<\/p>\n Before I could say yes or no, my buddy said, \u201cGreat. The rehearsal\u2019s at seven. I\u2019ll tell the guys to expect you.\u201d<\/p>\n When I arrived at the rehearsal, I was handed the lead trumpet book. In a big band, the lead trumpeter sets the style. It\u2019s a huge responsibility.<\/p>\n To my immense relief, every piece we played was one I knew from years ago. It all came back. I was asked to join the band at the end of the rehearsal.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been more than a decade since I sat at my parents\u2019 piano and stunned Ronda with the Beethoven sonata. I wonder sometimes what prompted my mom to ask me to play that day.<\/p>\n But maybe I know. A few years ago, I quit financial planning and earned a degree in music performance. I play in the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra, the University of Alaska, Fairbanks Wind Symphony and at churches and other venues around town.<\/p>\n I like to think it was God saying<\/a>, \u201cPlay something for me, Brian.\u201d That day and every day.<\/p>\n I\u2019m so glad I listened. I\u2019m so glad I get to do what makes me me.<\/em><\/p>\n Read more: 6 Ways to Boost Your Well-Being<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n