Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: BAGGAGE (02/08/18)
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TITLE: The Piano Mover | Previous Challenge Entry
By Rebecca Lunn
02/15/18 -
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“Any stairs or elevators?” The movers asked.
“Four flights of stairs, no elevators, one double-bed, a set of rattan sofas, and one piano,” I rattled off into an old black phone anchored between my jaw and shoulder while cradling an infant in one arm and trying to pack with the free arm.
“One hundred twenty dollars,” the man haggled. I gulped. Though the cost was not too unreasonable, our young family was on a tight budget.
My husband had agreed to pastor a Chinese church in West Point, Hong Kong, and that meant moving across the harbor. “I’m glad to finally have an income. Though the pay is modest, at least it would be regular. Don’t forget, we are serving the Lord and he will supply all our needs,” my husband comforted me.
When the four young Chinese movers arrived, I was surprised at how slight and slim they were. I had expected some strong burly men. They glanced quickly at our belongings and chuckled in good spirits because we did not have much. Everything fitted into their small truck with space left over.
When we all arrived at the new place, the four movers were in a conundrum. They began a lively discussion with lots of hand gestures. “There’s nowhere to park near the door,” the driver complained.
Our new apartment was squeezed in the middle of a row of three-story concrete houses with metal balconies. Wet clothes hanging on bamboo poles flapped drowsily in the hot wind. Narrow terraced lanes branched out like haphazard veins on the steep slope.
The driver bumbled around the cramped streets searching for a wide enough spot and finally parked a block away. I waited outside with the baby while my husband went up to the second floor to unlock the door. The four movers came nearer and nearer with sofa cushions piled on top of their heads. As they dropped the rattan sofa down, I sat in one to wait for them to move our household goods up four flights of stairs. Going back and forth like spritely little ants, the movers worked vigorously.
Something dark was lumbering toward me. I shielded my eyes against the sun with my fingers and squinted. It was the piano. Underneath it, the mover was bowed over like a crooked question mark. Down the uneven lane a block away, the other three movers had strapped the four-hundred-pound upright piano onto the worker’s back and he was heading in my direction. My heart pounded and I couldn’t breathe.
“This is not happening,” I thought to myself. The mythological Hercules is toddling with the world on his bent back.
I hurried to the man and gasped, “What are you doing?”
He didn’t bother to puff the obvious answer that he was moving my piano; he was saving his breath for his load.
“Are you okay? Do you need help?” I fretted.
“Yes; no, I’ve got this. It’s easier carrying it by myself,” he grunted. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry at this incredible sight.
As a child, I’ve sat with my mother in many a rickshaw pulled by one skinny elderly gentleman who could bimble tirelessly dodging car traffic. I’ve also watched scrawny Chinese coolies capably unloading sacks of heavy rice from floating sampans on their sweaty shoulders from dawn to dusk by the West Point harbor. But on Leong Fee Terrance, seeing one slip of a man moving a monstrosity of a piano on his back was, to me, an unthinkable feat.
Then a note of clarity hit me. The mover bore his load for half an hour, but I had strapped a burgeoning burden of bygones inside my brain for half a century. I carried grudges, resentments, and regrets on my slumped shoulders until they stiffened in veins of perpetual pain.
One day, a preacher exhorted, “Become better; not bitter.” I bagged that novel mind-set and de-clutter all the rooms of my heart. I determined to be ‘the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old,’ as Jesus said was possible; that is, ‘with rare and beautiful treasures,’ as Solomon urged.
Since then, my heart has soared—dreaming deliciously of my move to a new address in the New Jerusalem where I will live and not have to move house anymore. In the meantime, I play on a hand-me-down piano and sing about streets of gold.
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Matthew 13:52
Proverbs 24:3-4
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