I’m not exactly sure of its origin, but one day my father came home from work with a Stella six-string acoustic guitar that someone had given to him, and he gave it to me. Up until that time, my experience with musical instruments consisted mostly of some piano lessons and playing trumpet in the elementary school band. The guitar was definitely more alluring. I was twelve years old.

The strings on the Stella were ancient, the tuning pegs so gunked up and rusty that they could barely be moved. I recall actually trying to turn the stuck pegs with my teeth so I could tune it, before finally using a pair of pliers, and not even thinking to change the strings. At the time, I attempted to learn mostly folk songs – Bob Dylan, Buffy St. Marie, Joan Baez, Peter Paul & Mary, and some Beatles, along with making up my own melodies. Pressing into those old strings, I practiced until my fingertips bled, eventually acquiring some callouses. It was satisfying to figure out and learn songs on it.

About a year later, my father gifted me a brand new Giannini nylon string classical guitar. Being so much easier to play, it was an incentive to practice songs with some finger-picking; Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne, some Flamenco style stuff, a little country, some Allman Brothers. A friend’s older sister gave me a few lessons. I still fondly recall the guitar having the aroma of cedarwood, and the rattling sound of a pick accidentally dropped inside as I tried to retrieve it.

I don’t recall what became of the Stella, but I played the Giannini for a number of years – with friends at summer camp, in a middle-school talent show, for my family, but mostly just for myself. I wasn’t that great at it – I never considered myself a guitar player – but it took me through some difficult adolescent times, a place to temporarily escape into. Of additional importance was the fact that it had been a thoughtful gift from my dad, which meant a lot for a number of complicated reasons.

By high school, interests turned to rock music and rock and roll fantasies, which included hours spent lying on the floor in front of the stereo or singing into a hair brush in front of the mirror while pretending to be Janis Joplin or Grace Slick….. I still fooled around on that guitar sometimes, but I wasn’t very committed.

At around age twenty, I fell in with some “real” musicians who had a band – guys who were far more serious and definitely more talented than I was at making music. Playing in front of them was way too intimidating. I definitely did not attempt to participate and instead withdrew, as I was not a guitar player.

The withdrawal of my own interests is an issue that has repeated itself throughout my life. I tend to pull back from certain things if the person I am in a relationship with is much more passionate about it. I backed off from any serious gardening and cooking when a partner was a fervent cook and gardener, stepping back in order to give him the space to have full control of the kitchen and yards. I did the same with playing music. I realize this really has nothing to do with the other person; this is something in me, my tendency to retreat – sort of a “you’re better at it, so go for it” – a somewhat self-sabotaging trait…..

Back to the Giannini; at one juncture in time, life threw a few loops and I made last minute, open-ended plans to leave the country. Without too many possessions back then, there were only a few things I wanted to be able to hold on to; one dresser with some clothes in it, some photographs, and my Giannini guitar. I asked the guys in the band if they could keep my guitar for me – I figured who better than musicians? They had a practice room filled with instruments, after all – one more would not have made a difference. Perhaps if it had been something desirable to them, like a Guild, a Gibson, a Fender or a Martin guitar, they would have been more than eager, but there was no interest in even storing – much less using – my Giannini, and my request was, disappointingly, pretty much dismissed. I assumed it was considered not good enough for their professional tastes.

It was a relief when a couple I was friends with, the husband being a guitar teacher, did offer to hold on to it for me and promised to take good care of it until I got back. But when I did return a few months later and came to collect my guitar, he told me he didn’t have it anymore – he had either given it away or sold it (I never got an honest explanation, or actually any explanation at all) – within a mere couple of weeks of my leaving. I was pretty upset about it, the value being not monetary as much as emotional. While I had spent some rocky teenage years with that guitar, mostly I felt terrible because it had been a gift from my dad. I think that is what it was really about, this gift from my father. I could have gone out and gotten myself another guitar like it, but it would not have ever been the same. I felt betrayed. It was a crappy thing to do.

Eventually I married a talented guitar player and suddenly had access to some nice instruments – an acoustic Guild, an electric Gibson Les Paul Custom, a Gibson ES335 hollow body electric, and a Fender Twin Reverb amp….. and also someone to teach me a few things on them. I learned to play some Blind Faith, some Jefferson Airplane, some Grateful Dead. Mostly this occurred in private, because, you know I’m not really a guitar player….

And then one day I stumbled into an opportunity to have my own electric guitar at a very good price….a friend’s roommate was selling his possessions to pay off some legal fees. I think ultimately he ended up blowing that small amount of money I paid him in Tina’s Bar, while I ended up with a cherry red, Gibson SG-200, an oddity with two single-coil pickups that was only briefly manufactured in 1971-72.

My then-husband messed around with it on the rare occasion, calling it “a nice little rock and roll guitar, although it has limited use”. I fooled around with it in secret because, well, I’m not a guitar player. More than anything, it became a little bit of mind fuel for my rock and roll fantasies, even if I wasn’t playing it, but just because I had it. Honestly, sometimes I would listen to Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Mark Knopfler, Keith Richards or Eric Clapton, and in my head it would kind of be me making those sounds…..

Come on now, admit it, you know I’m not the only one who’s done that….

Years down the road and divorced, all the guitars left with the ex, except my SG, which I held on to. At one point, my musician brother-in-law cleaned it up and did some work on it, then kindly returned it to me. Every once in a while my ex would ask to borrow it – I would always have to make a point of retrieving it, lest it get absorbed into his collection of instruments and end up displayed on a wall for eternity. This happened a number of times. There used to be a little amplifier I used with it, but that was mysteriously “borrowed” and disappeared. No amp and not playing it, I lent it to my musician son-in-law, but he’s a lefty, so it was pretty much just being stored with him. Over the years I have considered selling it, yet I’ve always changed my mind, telling people it’s “an investment.” But I think the real truth is that once it’s gone, a piece of my own history, as well as that rock and roll fantasy, would be gone as well.

I did eventually buy another acoustic, but found I was not playing it because……face it, I’m not a guitar player! Why do I keep going back to this? A number of years ago I gave that one to my nephew, who learned on it and does play.

There is actually a Kiso Suzuki acoustic guitar here in this house at this very moment, in the next room, inside its case, propped up next to my sewing machine. It belongs to the SO, who does not play it and said he was going to get rid of it. But I said “Not yet”.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve reclaimed a few of the hobbies and interests that I had stepped back from in the past and found pleasure in them again. Cooking has been one of them. Gardening has been another. Not long ago, I took out that Suzuki guitar parked next to the sewing machine to see if I could reclaim that old interest too. What I discovered was that I am now too deaf to hear all the notes in each chord, much less tune it. That my hands and fingers are arthritic and it hurts to hold it. That there are no callouses on my fingertips and I am not interested in developing any. That although, in my mind, I thought I remembered how to play things that I once knew, it was not exactly like getting on a bicycle (at least not for me). It has been far too long and I have forgotten much. It was the reality of this experience – that I am not a guitar player and was never serious enough about it to become a good one – that steered me into the decision to finally sell my SG.

A guitar store let me leave it there on consignment. Ironically, and within days of bringing it there, my ex-husband happened to walk into that very same store – in a city where neither of us lives near, hours away actually – with the intention of getting a fret job done on his own guitar. What are the odds of that? He immediately recognized my SG hanging on the wall for sale and was a bit taken aback, shooting me a text stating his surprise and that he “would have liked to have had first crack at it.” I said to him that I wasn’t playing it and could use the money. That if he really wants to buy let me know, as it hadn’t sold yet, but that also, I honestly thought he never was really that interested in it due to its “limited use“. I guess he wasn’t, because he never got back to me about it. He expressed his shock at the price the store owner had marked it at. I asked him if he thought it would sell for the price listed. He replied “Never”.

It sold pretty quickly, and at the asking price.

Of course, there have been some mixed feelings about letting the SG go. It has been around through about forty years of my life transitions. It was a cool guitar. I loved the double cut-away body, the weight and balance of it, and it was certainly a prop to some inner fantasies, rich food for what are now just Senior Musings. But honestly, I was never a guitar player, at least not a good one, and I never will be. That’s okay, I’m good at other things. There is a kind of release in that acceptance.

~*~