THE PIANIST’S ONLY DAUGHTER

This debut memoir centers on a woman’s spirited life with artistic parents whom she helped care for in their later years.

Adams was born in 1950s Connecticut to a male concert pianist and a female poet. Both of her parents earned money as teachers—her mother, Jane, working at a community college, and her father, Donald, giving piano lessons. While Jane was a loving and attentive mother, the author had a somewhat volatile relationship with her father. Donald’s states, for example, weren’t predictable, and family members had to monitor his “blue moods,” when he would lie on a sofa or bed in an apparent funk. He was passionate about perfecting his keyboard skills (“He obsessed about how to interpret certain phrases and got himself stressed about how much emotion to put into his playing”). He also threw the family into turmoil with more than one affair with a piano student. Adams ultimately forged her own path by going to college, which led to a career in social work, and eventually starting a family of her own. But her parents, who even after splitting up somehow found each other again, needed their daughter as they aged. Both Jane and Donald contracted diseases, including Parkinson’s and a variety of cancers. Because constant care was essential, the author’s parents took up residence in a senior living facility, often moving to other rooms or places, depending on their ever changing physical and mental conditions and Medicare’s limited coverage. Adams and her husband also relocated her parents to be closer to their California home, since Jane and Donald’s only child remained fiercely loyal to her family.

Adams’ sharp prose delivers myriad details about her and her parents’ lives, though she devotes much of this memoir to her parents. She undeniably had a closer bond with her mother and, at times, resented her father. As described in this book, Donald was selfish, often putting his own needs (his piano playing or misguided romantic impulses) ahead of his family’s. Even in his later years, his “complaints and emotional outpourings” dominated the conversations with his daughter. Meanwhile, the account, which unfolds chronologically, reveals Jane’s gradually worsening condition via a series of heart-wrenching scenes. It’s an unflinching portrait of aging and a not-always-flattering glimpse at medical care in the United States. For example, the author recounts nurses and doctors who appeared either indifferent or ignorant of her parents’ medical histories, and a “skilled nursing facility” that truncated a Medicare-covered three-night stay to observe Jane’s condition, forcing the author to pay out-of-pocket fees. Most impressively, this book boasts a swift pace, covering numerous decades as well as a handful of cities and states where Adams and her family lived. This work skillfully spotlights historical events, too, such as the rise of feminism in the ’70s and the Covid-19 lockdown starting in 2020. The author couples the real-world backdrop with such sublime touches as snippets of her parents’ love letters and emails, along with a few of her mother’s poems. Adams also includes a number of personal photographs, from images of her parents as kids and later a married couple to pictures of the two when they were older, relying on wheelchairs.

An enthralling account that traces the highs and lows of a family dealing with aging.