What do you get for the guy who has everything? The truth is, my dad doesn’t necessarily have a bunch of gadgets or golf clubs. In fact, he is truly a man of simple pleasures: Dunkin Donuts coffee and donuts, the Tigers, reruns of “The Honeymooners,” apple pie, you get the picture.
It’s something that can make it difficult to figure out what to buy him for birthdays and days like Father’s Day. Recently, we’ve started trying to do more experience-based gifts; for example, this year my younger brother took our dad to a Frank Sinatra impersonator show in Detroit over the weekend. It was the perfect kind of gift for our dad!
When it came to figuring out a present for my dad this year, I decided to do something simple and sentimental.
It has been two years since my grandma, his mom, passed away. His dad passed away in the early 1970s, so my dad had a very close relationship with my grandma until she died.
My grandma was an incredible, classically trained pianist. Any visit to her home meant playing around with the piano. For many years, she would tell me that she was going to give me her piano. Then, after Stella was born, she broke the news to me that I wouldn’t be getting the piano. I told her, “that’s okay, Maka.” And she said, “I’m going to give it to Stella.”
Stella loved visiting Maka/Muck at her little condo, and was often at the piano messing around with the keys. Zack and I both took little video clips of them at the piano together. When she passed away, I helped arrange for a piano moving company to have the piano brought to our house, and it found its perfect spot in our living room.
Since then, Stella has continued to be drawn to the piano, and we started taking her to piano lessons at the MSU Community Music School this spring. In May, she performed in her very first recital and nailed it.
I decided to gather up all of these little snippets of Stella and Maka at the piano together and make a video for my dad. He often likes to go back and watch old video clips of my grandma on his phone, so I thought this would be a great way to show Stella’s growth and also the legacy that she carries on with the piano.
Here is the final result:
And he loved it.