Sheet music and a love story

Today on my way home from Oxford, I stopped at a dingy, creaky, stuffed-to-the-brim antique store and asked if they had any sheet music. A short, bald old man with a smile approximately as bright as a Christmas tree pointed me to a large, musty box stuck under several picture frames and a very ugly set of china.

As I rifled through the music, (raising absolute billows of dust - it's a good thing I don't have allergies-) I heard him raise a window and call to somebody outside, "Young lady, come in here right now. It's cold out there!"

A few minutes later, in stepped an old lady, with dark brown dyed hair and glasses that covered most of her face. He told her he'd go out and finish the job, and that she should sit and get warm.

Later I edged my way into the little back room with the cash register, clutching my music and hoping one of the twenty tin advertisements hanging from the ceiling wouldn't fall on my head. She started looking through the music I'd chosen, deciding on a fair price, and when she came to a beautifully preserved book of Chopin's Nocturnes, she gave a little reminiscent sigh.

"This was mine when I was about your age. You play?"

"No ma'am, not the piano. That's for a friend."

"Are you a music major?"

"Hopefully I will be next year. Were you?"

"Oh, no. I did receive a full scholarship to Mississippi College, but I didn't go. My teacher thought I had what it took to be a concert pianist. After one of my performances, she came and said, 'I hope you realize what needs to be done now. You need to give everything you've got to this music, and in a few years we'll be hearing from you all over the country.'

I told her, 'But I'm gonna get married to a preacher!' She said, 'Honey, don't you know that preachers don't make any money? You'll be poor your whole life! And how can you give up this opportunity to go get married?!'

Well, I married him anyway - I loved my John! - and that was that. We've been married for fifty-seven years!"

She stopped toying with the music book, looked me in the eye, and firmly said, "I've never regretted that decision."



That was all. We talked for a few more minutes, and I took my music and left. As I walked outside, I heard the old man - her John - whistling in the backyard.

You don't often get to see that kind of love lasting that long. After fifty seven years, he was still "her John," and she was still his young lady. He was still taking care of her, she was still not sorry she gave up what could've been a glittering career as a concert pianist to marry a poor, country preacher.

I love real-life assurances that true, deep love really does exist. It isn't a myth. It doesn't have to fade and die with age. Those two old people are a living testimony of that, and I came away from that antique store with much more than a few dusty music books.