What's on my mind...

This is the present Facebook question, and my answer has to be 'the hideous disaster that's the oil spill'. However, I'm not going to write about that.

Then Rogers Yahoo asks, 'What are you doing right now?' I have to resist the temptation to answer, 'Staring at the computer screen. Duh'. But I'm not going to write about that either.

Instead, I'm going to continue the theme of my mom and her brother-in-law, the lawyer. One of the things they had in common was that they both used to play the piano. In fact, my uncle kept this as his hobby almost up to the day he died, although he wouldn't always oblige when asked to play. His style was that of Charlie Kunz, a name you never hear these days, but so popular and influential to my parents' generation. It was light and kind of jazzy, always keeping a strict and usually quite fast rhythm.

On the other hand, I can't remember my mother playing much after my primary school years, although occasionally she'd take a turn at my aunt's piano. We had a small instrument in our living room and I learned classics for years... but that's another story. What I wanted to tell you is that when she grew old I asked my mother why she'd stopped playing. Her answer surprised me, and still makes me blink (figuratively speaking). She told me, 'Your father didn't like me to play.'

Why not, I wonder?