By Loriann Knapton

We all have gifts. Natural talents that make each one of us unique.  For example, some folks are athletic, setting records that put them on top of podiums, while others can solve complicated math equations. Some work magic with their hands, creating beautiful crafts with knitting needles, crochet hooks, pottery wheels or paintbrushes, and still others can turn a box of Ritz crackers, a can of Cheeze Whiz and a pound of dry salami into an unrecognizable yet delicious appetizer.  The point is we all have something, a skill or ability that comes to us easily and naturally. Special gifts, formed at conception when sperm meets egg and nurtured throughout one’s lifetime.  We all have them. The challenge is in recognizing exactly what they are.  

My mother and dad had grand ambitions for me as their only child. They weren’t interested in having me become a CEO, Nobel prize winner, or Astronaut. Mostly, their dreams for me were more modest. Grow up, get married to a nice man, have babies and because they both loved to dance, maybe, just maybe, I could make a few extra bucks playing a musical instrument in a polka band. But there was one small issue with this plan. Namely, the fact that musical talent was most definitely not one of my natural gifts. Sunday school choir had proved that I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, and my one year of piano lessons amounted to me being able to plunk out Mary had a Little Lamb with one finger.  Despite this knowledge, my parents still held high hopes for me, and when the accordion band came to town offering to sign up the neighborhood children for lessons, they promptly put me on the list. Now as a child of the late 60s and teen of the early 1970s the accordion was the last musical instrument that any of my peers would consider “cool” and as a pre-teen “cool” was what I desperately wanted to be so admittedly I wasn’t as enthusiastic as my mom and dad were for me to learn to play an instrument mostly associated with polka bands and the Scottish jig.

No matter, because the illusion that I would become the female version of Lawrence Welk went on for the next seven years with weekly lessons and the purchase of a $1500 Santini accordion with money I received when my grandmother passed away.  Soon there were frequent requests from my mother whenever anyone visited for me to  “Play for us Loriann” at which time I would ceremoniously drag my accordion out and play the only tune I knew from memory, the  “She’s Too Fat for Me” polka for my beaming mother and her less than impressed friends.  On occasion, I would include a bit more fanfare and Oompa my way through a piece from my current lesson, which included many more stops than starts. After several years, when it became apparent that the Lawrence Welk show wouldn’t be contacting me anytime soon to audition, my mother finally relented and let me stop taking accordion lessons when I was fourteen. The great accordion experiment was over, but the Santini remained.

After I grew up and moved out of the house, I begrudgingly dragged the accordion with me to each new dwelling and stored it in an out-of-the-way closet. Very occasionally during these years, I might be persuaded to drag it out and play the one song I remembered, the trusty “She’s too fat for me polka” if anyone asked, but mostly that grand Santini stayed in the closet taking up space. Once, about eight years ago, after moving it again from one closet to make room in another, I suggested out loud that I might sell it–an announcement that made my grown-up daughter exclaim. “Mom NO! Not your accordion! You can’t sell it. I want it and I’ll take it as soon as I have room.” Which meant it wasn’t going anywhere soon, and so in the closet it stayed, collecting dust, until this past October when I resurrected it in preparation for the last concert.

I’m not sure where the idea came from, but I suddenly had this great thought that the perfect Christmas gift for my 93-year-old mother might just be an accordion concert. God knows she didn’t need more bath powder, and my giving up the accordion those many years ago had been a disappointment.  And so, with great hope that the gift of music had somehow found me in the years between my childhood lessons and receiving my Medicare card, I started practicing.  Several times each week leading up to Christmas when no one was about, I dragged out the accordion, propped up my old music books, and practiced my very rusty repertoire of songs.  I found that my arthritic fingers were no longer nimble on the right side keyboard, my left hand struggled to feel my way around the chord buttons and the continuous action of pulling my left arm to move the bellows was no longer an easy movement, one that ultimately required a trip to the massage therapist to repair what I ruefully called “bellow arm”. But I persisted for several determined weeks until I was finally able to play several pieces well enough to not embarrass myself during our family’s Christmas celebration.

That snowy night in late December, as our entire family settled around the tree to exchange gifts, I pulled the accordion from its case to my lap and announced, “Mom, your gift is first,” and  I began to play. I started with the trusty “She’s Too Fat” polka, the one piece I was semi-confident I could get through without error, and continued with a few of mom’s favorite Hank Williams songs including “Your Cheating Heart,” “Jambalaya” and “Hey, Hey Good Lookin’,” before finishing up with “Silver Bells” and “Silent Night.” For 20 minutes, my family listened to the music. There were stops and restarts, several missed notes, a grandson stepping in at one point to substitute for a music stand, and at least one “I played that so much better yesterday!” comment from me before I snapped the bellows shut. 

My mom just sat silently throughout, softly clapping her hands, tapping her toes, and beaming at me, until I played the last song, her favorite Christmas carol, “Silent Night,” at which point she sang along in her wobbly soprano with tears in her eyes. After I had put the accordion back in its case and closed the lid, she looked at me, glowing with pride at the cleverness of her only child, and with sparkling eyes and a huge smile, she said. “Loriann– That is the best Christmas present I have ever received”.  

We all get natural gifts, unique to each of us, determined at conception when sperm meets egg.  Until the last concert, I did not realize that making music was one of mine.       

© 2025 Loriann Knapton

Loriann Knapton has been writing since childhood.  Having crafted countless rhymes, short stories, and personal essays over her sixty-odd years she has a keen interest in ensuring her family memories are recorded for the next generations. Her writing reflects the humorous and poignant experiences of growing up in 1960’s small-town America with her mom and disabled dad.