By Eli Cranor
Nov 9, 2025
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| Left: Eli's daughter; right: Vicky Kiehl |
Per my daughter’s insistence, today’s offering is a duet. There have been more duets lately, a shift that can be traced back to when we thought our time with Ms. Vicky had come to its end.
My daughter was heartbroken. Ms. Vicky was her fourth piano teacher in the two years since she started tickling the ivories.
There was also Granny’s recent departure.
Granny was my wife’s grandmother and my daughter’s great-grandmother. Granny’s passing shook our family hard. It shook my baby girl even harder.
For the first time in her young life, she’d encountered death. She had so many questions, questions with answers she could not comprehend. She was only eight, almost nine, by the time she met Ms. Vicky.
There were similarities: gray hair, slim build, a house full of trinkets from a time gone past: framed cross-stitchings, stuffed cats, an antique pedal organ in the den.
I found Ms. Vicky through the Music Department at Arkansas Tech University. She’d worked there, taught the professors’ kids, and was still teaching them when my daughter arrived for her first lesson.
The fruit of Ms. Vicky’s labor was on full display at my daughter’s rookie recital, a whole lineup of students ranging from beginners to what sounded like savants to this untrained ear.
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It was a high point, a promise of what was to come, and then I received the email. The one from Ms. Vicky that said, “I’m sorry to tell you my health has suddenly taken a bad turn and I must cancel lessons for a while.”
There was no way to shield my daughter from the news. Tuesday — her lesson day — arrived without mercy. Followed by a month spent playing the piano alone.
Then, one Tuesday weeks later, my baby girl had an idea. She said, “I want to see Ms. Vicky.” And we did, but not before we made a stop at Kroger for flowers and a card.
It wasn’t long after that visit that I received a second email, a short “Thank You” note with a postscript: Ms. Vicky was feeling better, good enough to give lessons another go.
Ms. Vicky worked her way into it. She started small. I think my daughter was her only student for the first few weeks.
There are more now.
There’s a car in the driveway parked behind my Ford, a red Tahoe with a child in the backseat, another young girl waiting to have her turn with Ms. Vicky.
But she’ll have to wait a little while longer.
These two—this odd couple, separated by generations, connected by a shared love of music, sitting side by side on the same piano bench—have a show to finish.
A duet that’s still going strong.
