The Accordion in the Attic

When we cleared out my great-uncle Stanislaw's attic, we found an accordion in a leather case, red and pearl and smelling of mothballs. Nobody in the family knew he played.

My cousin Marta took it to a repair shop in Chicago, where an old Polish man named Józef replaced the bellows and tightened the reeds. When she picked it up, Józef played a polka on it right there in the shop, and two customers started dancing between the shelves.

Then he asked whose it was. When Marta told him the name, he went quiet. He had played at a wedding with Stanislaw in 1958. He remembered him. He said Stanislaw was "the happiest musician in Milwaukee, and the worst at reading music."

Marta is learning to play now. She's terrible and joyful, which, according to Józef, means she's playing it exactly right.

At Christmas she played "Sto Lat" for my grandmother's ninetieth birthday on Stanislaw's accordion. The whole family sang. My grandmother, who rarely cries, wiped her eyes with a napkin and said, "He would have loved this." Then she demanded a polka, and we pushed the furniture against the walls and danced until the neighbors knocked, not to complain, but to join in.