Sleeping with a Piano

My adored nephew is coming to visit in a month and, in preparation for his visit, I am getting the piano tuned. Why? My nephew is a pianist. At one point, he’d planned on becoming a concert pianist, but has since decided that what he really wants is fame and fortune and there are much better ways to go about obtaining those. However, he is still quite passionate about his music and is looking forward to having the time and opportunity to play the piano while on vacation.

Unfortunately, my nephew normally does not get to play as much as he likes because his beloved baby grand did not move away from home with him and is still located at my sister’s house. The piano currently resides in their newly-built music room where it sits innocently, but before that…

First off, a couple of facts about the daily routine at my sister’s house… My sister does not run her A/C at night, but uses a whole-house fan for a couple of hours right before bedtime. The fan is located in the ceiling in hallway between all the bedrooms and with surprising force, sucks air up and out of the house (I suspect it could also suck their cat up and out of the house if she ventures too near while it is running) and draws the cooler night air in through the opened windows. Also, my sister does laundry every night until midnight or so.

But back to the piano. RWT and I were visiting one summer soon after my nephew received his piano. Since this was before the construction of the music room, the piano dominated my nephew’s bedroom. Pretty much all that fit in the room was the piano and the bed and that was the room where we would be sleeping. We’d tried my niece's bunk beds on our previous visit and just could not overcome the discomfort of the wooden slats lurking under the thin mattresses (not to mention the claustrophobia), so we opted for my nephew’s room with the piano looming over the bed.

Around 10:00 p.m., when RWT could not longer even feign semi-consciousness, we said we were heading to bed. My sister then turned on the whole-house fan and started to open windows to let in the cool air. As RWT was wrestling with the blind in my nephew’s room so he could get to the window to open it, my nephew came in a said “Oh, you can’t open the windows in here, the colder air will make my piano get out of tune.” Okay. We’ll just leave the door open and pray for a bit of air circulation.

At 10:15 p.m., we were in bed, the lights out (but still plenty of illumination from the hallway shining through the half-open door) and the whole-house fan sounding like a jet landing on top of us. BZZZZZZ. Time to change loads of laundry in the laundry room right across the hall. RWT then got up and shut (actually, "shut" is a bit too mild of a word) the door. Quieter. Darker. Hotter.

I finally fell asleep only to have vivid dreams that I was clinging for dear life to the edge of a mountain in a rain forest. It was then that I noticed the slant to the bed. When we first went to bed, I thought that RWT’s side seemed lower than mine, but figured he was just sinking into the mattress more since he weighs more. But no. There is a definite sideways tilt to the bed and I was on the uphill side. Every time I relaxed the muscles in my body, I would roll down into RWT. Not necessarily a problem (we can even sleep in a twin bed together, if necessary), but in the stuffy hotness preferred by the piano, it was torture. Warm, sleepy, sleepy, roll, hot, hot, sweaty! Eventually it occurred to me to wake up RWT and have him lay on the uphill side where his greater mass worked to even out the bed or, at least, kept him from rolling down it. Ah, sleep.

It was a great visit as always and the lack of sleep did not stop us from having a good time (and we took our airbed and slept in the family room the next time for an even better time). But, while I love my nephew and I love his piano playing, I still have a few issues with his piano. And I absolutely refuse to sleep with it again.