Tradition

When my husband and I first got married, we had a lot of goals and dreams for our family. We hoped our children would be musical. We wanted to spend a lot of time together building relationships. We wanted our family to be different, to be better than ideal. We were poor students when we married, with very little money and lots of schooling ahead of us. He had a small old red Geo Metro, a gift from his parents after his mission. I had a little bit of college savings. We had less than $1000 to our names, probably a lot less, but we had each other and we were determined to get this marriage off right. So it was an easy decision to not get a television. We decided we would get a piano instead. We wanted music in our home, not noise and distraction and a lot of time wasted. One of the first things we did was pool all the money we got from our wedding, those $15 and $20 checks, along with all the money we got from taking gifts back (we really, REALLY didn't need seven large serving dishes or fancy silver platters and punch bowls). We scraped together what we had and went in search of a piano. After a few weeks of fruitless searching, we realized that most of the pianos in our price range were old, beat-up, and badly out of tune. The old and beat-up part we didn't mind; the bad sound, we did. I found an ad in the paper for used pianos and went on a Saturday to a small home in Salt Lake that was also a music studio. The man had a number of pianos, all with wonderful sound, but all just out of reach of our price. He said he found that many of their students weren't able to find decent used pianos, so they'd started finding those with good sound and fixing them up. Finally, he showed me one they'd just hauled in that day. It was in a dusty garage and was missing a few keys. I plunked out a few beautiful notes and fell in love with that little piano. The price? $450, plus $75 delivery fee. We'd been hoping to find something for much less, but the man assured me that this piano wouldn't last and I knew we had enough to pay for it. However, since DH was home taking a test, I was left to make the first major decision of our marriage by myself. Should I take the plunge, spend $200 more than we'd talked about, and hope DH would be okay with it, or should I drive home, talk it over with him and hope the piano would still be there when we made the decision? Nervous and hopeful, I said a silent prayer and then said, "we'll take it." DH was very gracious and great about being left out of the decision, and it was delivered to our third-floor apartment the next week. The man said for the first time, he felt like he'd really earned that $75 delivery fee, as the hairpin turns and the narrow railing in front of our apartment necessitated turning that enormous, extremely heavy, nearly 100-year-old piano in all sorts of ways, including on its side. For about ten minutes, we weren't even sure it would fit, but soon after, there it sat, a beautiful piece of symbolism and our first real piece of furniture. I felt rich. I even got better at playing through the years, though I'm still not that great.

(our piano a few weeks after it was delivered.)

We kept our "no-TV" vow for many years, even though we were offered several times someone's old set. Finally, when Lillian was two and Joey six months old, we got a small, 14 inch set with a DVD player so we could watch videos. We still didn't get any channels but we could enjoy our small but growing collection of fun family videos and check out others from the library. I still remember the first movie we bought was Stuart Little. The second was Annie. That tiny TV served us very well for about five years, when we moved and upgraded to a huge 54 inch monster that matches large DVD collection. We did have cable for the first six months we lived here, but only because it was free with our internet package for that first little while. We both found ourselves watching it too much and were very happy when it was gone. We do have one major exception to our "NO TV rule" and it happens every two years when the Olympics rolls around. We decided that was one event we didn't want to miss. We've handled it differently through the years. The first couple of times, we rented a television for a month. Then for a few years we used rabbit ears on our little TV, though we found out that the only room in our house that got good enough reception was our bedroom. So all of us crammed in there, hanging out on our bed every night as we watched.

(Lillian and Joey with Sarah and Allison, watching the summer Olympics, 2004)

The last time the Olympics was held was right after Harmony was born, and we simply paid for a month of TV with our internet provider. But this time? It was almost the first time we didn't watch. Everywhere we called required a long-term commitment or an exorbitant installation fee. "Sure, we can sign you up and for a great price too! All we need is a three year commitment." Even our ISP wanted a two-year commitment, even though since the cables had already been run all it would require on their end is a simple switch. So, we tried other options. We tried rabbit ears and a converter box. We got channel 11 with fabulous clarity, plus a couple of Spanish channels, but no luck on channel 5, the Olympic channel. My parents, in town for the weekend, decided to help by looking for longer rabbit ears. They came home with a digital rabbit ear set, and after about a five minutes of fiddling, we no longer got channel 11. A half hour more of tweaking and we got pretty darn good channel 5. Good enough for us, and we've enjoyed the last few days of watching. Random Sidenote #1: Am I the only one who feels figure skating has lost its artistry with the new scoring system? All that constant blade-grabbing and doing tricks just for points has taken away from the grace and beauty of it. And it used to be that if someone fell, you knew they blew it. Now, they just miss the points for that one element and can still win the event. I'm not sure I like that. Random Sidenote #2: Every time we have TV, whether at a hotel on vacation or while we watch the Olympics, I'm always so grateful we don't have it. It's not the programs; usually, there are tons of interesting and fascinating ones. It's the commercials -- Viagra ads come to mind, as do the many advertisements for shows that are obviously not for kids or for thinking adults. (I know, I know, you TiVo so you never have to watch those things). What are your family's traditions? Are you watching the Olympics? How do you handle TV in your family?