Hello sweeties,

I have been wanting to write this post for some time now but I just could not find the guts to do it. I've been very emotional over this whole thing and it is silly actually to get so attached to things but I can't really help it. But when Dimitra from Decorasylum posted this post about music and decor I took it as a sign and decided to man up and write this post!

When I was 7 years old, my mother came to pick me up from school and told me there was a big black fat lady waiting for me at home. Up to this day she still talks about how big my eyes got when I rushed into the house to find Clarabel. My sister's shining big black piano!

Clarabel had the most prominent place in our living room and our days since her arrival where never left without music. For more than 9 years my very talented sister played the piano for us. She played the piano for me. I got so attached to listening to her music I fell in love with Bach! Bach for crying out loud! The most severe, foul of taste and power music composer!

Anyhow, the years passed, as they tend to do, and my sister moved out of the house to study but Clarabel didn't. Then I moved out of the house and returned 10 years later only to find Clarabel, still home but not in the living room anymore. No, Clarabel was moved to the storage room where she was left in peace for years and years, her belly filled with lavender buds to prevent moth damage, her dress covered with fabric and plastic to keep her dry.

My sister moved to her own house and Clarabel was just to big and fat for her apartment (and she was getting quite old too) so my sister thought she could replaced her with an electric piano that was way thinner and much much younger. She still plays Bach like it was meant to be played (though I rarely get to experience that anymore), her talent untouched by the years passed.

The house we grew up in is now mine, me and my husband have renovated it but Clarabel took almost half of our storage room and she started complaining that no one use to play with her anymore. I knew it was time to let her go. I asked around if anyone wanted a piano but there wasn't anyone close to us that did. Someone suggested to give her to the antiquaries but they didn't want her. A person asked me for money in order to break her down and carry her pieces to the garbage cans. I said hell no! No one was breaking down my childhood friend! Not as long as I was alive! I know it sounds melodramatic but having someone break that piano felt like letting them break every childhood sound I've kept in my soul. I just couldn't let her go.

Months passed and Clarabel was still there. The storage room had to be renovated and she had to be moved. I saw an ad about a site where people could list things to giveaway for free. The site was www.xarizofree.gr. I wrote an ad about Clarabel and in about one hour a lady called Lia send me an email asking for the piano. When I talked to her on the phone she actually said we were the answer to her prayers! She has a daughter with real potential in the piano but without a real piano to practice on! She is 7 years old and a great talent according to her teacher who visited me and said hello to Clarabel some weeks ago. We arrange the move of Clarabel to Thessaloniki and now she has once again found her prominent place in a living room. It may not be my living room anymore but nothing, honestly nothing could give me more pleasure than the knowledge that she is once again being played by talented child hands!

I know I am going to see her again when I travel to Thessaloniki and I really hope that Lia's daughter will play something for me.

I am pretty sure that some of you will find this post long and silly but honestly I don't care.

I never learned how to play the piano, no matter how hard my sister tried. I could not learn anything more than the very first notes of For Elise.

And you may think that Clarabel was not even my piano, only she was, she really was...