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Man finds himself playing piano duets with a mystery neighbor. An atypical love story begins.

At first, it seemed like the perfect romantic meet-cute, but turned out to be something far more meaningful.

Photo credit: Canva

Man's through-the-wall piano duet with a mystery neighbor became a beautiful love story.

Sometimes the right two people come along at the right time in each other's lives, and a story for the ages is born. But it's rare that we get to see such stories captured in real-time. This time we're lucky. In a silent saga befitting a Pixar short film—complete with soundtrack—a man and his mystery neighbor have taken us all on a beautiful journey of music, love, longing, and loss.

Giorgio Lo Porto is an Italian living in London, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, he shared a video of his new neighbor playing piano. The music is muffled behind their shared wall, but clear enough to hear. Lo Porto wrote that he left a note for the mystery neighbor, telling them he loved their music and asking if they could play "My Heart Will Go On." And so they did.

 celine dion, my heart will go on, titanic "My Heart WIll Go On" by Celine Dion Giphy  

Lo Porto left another note suggesting that they play something together, each in their own apartments. A call-and-response duet of sorts. He didn't know if they'd do it, or if they'd forget when the time came. He also said he himself hadn't played in months. But he started playing at 2pm, and as soon as he stopped, the neighbor began.

Their duets became a weekend "meet up," playing back and forth through their shared wall.

You can watch a compilation of the performance below but keep reading because there is so much more to this beautiful story:

  - YouTube  youtu.be  

 


Seems like a perfect meet-cute in a romantic comedy, doesn't it?

On Valentine's Day, they played a duet and Lo Porto wrote "It's Valentine's Day. We're in lockdown. This was our way of saying, I don't know who you are but I'm here. You're not alone."

Then it came time for them to meet.

"Well, today I have met my neighbor," Lo Porto wrote in a video shared a week later. "It was better than expected."

"His name is Emil..."

 piano, piano duets, music, mystery neighbor A mystery neighbor started playing along on the piano and a beautiful friendship formed.Photo credit: Canva

"He is 78 years old, originally from Poland. This is his temporary accommodation while he waits for his house to be sold."

"He lost his wife in December due to COVID," Lo Porto shared. "And all he has left is the piano. And the reason why he plays at 2pm every weekend is because his wife loved it."

"He thanked me for keeping him motivated and less lonely. And I promised that I'll play with him until he moves out."

"He is camera shy," he added. "But I'll try again when he's ready."

Lo Porto shared that Emil is "a special soul" and that "he is fine now, healing." And his piano playing is just gorgeous.

Playing with Emil inspired Lo Porto to write his own song. "I woke up with 3 notes in my head," he wrote on February 27.

He added some string orchestration to it and called it "Dear Emil." It's the first song he's ever written.

  - YouTube  www.youtube.com  

"When I wrote this piece I started picturing Emil's life," he wrote. "A 78 y.o. widower who lost his wife due to this stupid virus. Spending days at home alone due to lockdown. Looking forward to play her favourite piano songs at 2pm every weekend, until a note appeared on his door. A letter showing he was heard and not alone. And a new friendship started. Two pianos between a wall, not knowing who was playing. But it didn't matter."

"You can be the light of somebody else's darkness. So keep shining." Another week later, Lo Porto announced that Emil was moving out the following week, and shared their last weekend duet—the much requested "Moonlight Sonata."

He said Emil still didn't want to be on camera, but said he was much happier and thanked everyone who had been watching their duets. Lo Porto promised he would keep playing for him on the weekends.

 piano, piano playing, music, duets Two men bonded over their love of piano.  Giphy  

It would be lovely if the story ended there, but it doesn't. (May need a tissue now if you haven't already grabbed one.)

Lo Porto shared on March 14th that he'd received word that Emil had passed away in his sleep: "And now he is reunited with his wife."

"Dear Emil," he wrote. "I knew very little about you, but you changed my life. You gave me back my passion, and we shared that with the world. You'll be in my heart. I'll keep playing, thinking of how powerful music can be. You said I was your light, but you've been mine too. Bye, Emil."

  - YouTube  www.youtube.com  

 

If you needed a good cry today, hope that helped. And if you needed a reminder that humans can be wonderful and life can connect us in beautiful and mysterious ways, now you've got one.

You can follow Lo Porto on YouTube and listen to his music on Spotify as well.

This article originally appeared four years ago.

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Why one mom left a pile of clean diapers and wipes in a HomeGoods bathroom.

Paying it forward never goes out of style.

When Christina Causland stopped in a bathroom at the HomeGoods in Solana Beach, California, she found an unexpected surprise: a pile of diapers.

Unused, luckily. Sitting atop the small pile of wipes and diapers was a small note. It read:

"I once found myself in this exact same spot with a newborn with a crazy blowout and NO DIAPERS or WIPES. An unmitigated disaster, that was! Just in case you have found yourself in the same sort of pickle, I brought in some wipes and diapers to save the day. Good luck out there! Happy Holidays! —Sarah"
 
 
 

 I don't know you Sarah, but you're a gem! #gooddeeds #upworthy #HomeGoods #mademyday

 

A photo posted by ✌️😆🐞 (@xtina_cauz) on

Christina doesn't have any kids of her own, but she was so touched by this stranger's act of kindness that she decided to share it on Instagram.

"I can definitely relate to being in a pinch and not having what I needed," she explains in an e-mail. "I mostly just wanted to highlight her good deed and pass it along in hopes it would inspire others to do so."

We've all found ourselves in similar situations. Maybe instead of missing a diaper, you were a dollar short in the checkout line at the grocery store or maybe you had car trouble away from home with no one around to help. No matter what the case, we all know what it's like being in unfortunate and embarrassing situations — and how grateful we feel when a complete stranger comes to the rescue.

Sometimes you just need a little help. Photo by iStock.

Little things like stocking a store restroom with some emergency diapers can make a big difference in people's lives. During the holiday season, it's a great time to reflect on what our own contributions to the world can be.

As the saying goes, not all heroes wear capes. To a frustrated mom in an unenviable situation, Sarah came to the rescue. The same thing can be seen in the world all around us, from the Philadelphia restaurant known for its "pay-it-forward" approach to pizza to the stranger who picked up the tab for a Texan's auto repairs to people just doing their best to make positivity contagious.

Sure, there are a lot of bad things out there, a lot of negativity that permeates society. But if there's one thing that can warm the heart of cynics everywhere, it's knowledge that the world is filled with small-scale superheroes — we just have to look for them. And if we can't find them, we should do our best to be them.

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A man thought it was OK to question her son's tutu. Was he ever wrong.

'I will not let angry strangers tell my son what he can or cannot wear.'

When people ask Jen Anderson Shattuck's 3-year-old son about the sparkly tutus he likes to wear, he says they make him feel beautiful and brave.

He wisely says there are no rules about what boys can wear or what girls can wear.

Jen says people are generally pretty accepting of the tutus ... except for people like the stranger Jen and her son met a few weeks ago. Check out Jen's Facebook post below about what the man said and how she responded:

My three-and-a-half-year-old son likes to play trucks. He likes to do jigsaw puzzles. He likes to eat plums. And he...

Posted by Jen Anderson Shattuck on Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Here's the full text:

My three-and-a-half-year-old son likes to play trucks. He likes to do jigsaw puzzles. He likes to eat plums. And he likes to wear sparkly tutus. If asked, he will say the tutus make him feel beautiful and brave. If asked, he will say there are no rules about what boys can wear or what girls can wear.

My son has worn tutus to church. He has worn tutus to the grocery store. He has worn tutus on the train and in the sandbox. It has been, in our part of the world, a non-issue. We have been asked some well-intentioned questions; we've answered them; it has been fine. It WAS fine, until yesterday.

Yesterday, on our walk to the park, my son and I were accosted by someone who demanded to know why my son was wearing a skirt. We didn't know him, but he appeared to have been watching us for some time.

"I'm just curious," the man said. "Why do you keep doing this to your son?"

He wasn't curious. He didn't want answers. He wanted to make sure we both knew that what my son was doing---what I was ALLOWING him to do---was wrong."She shouldn't keep doing this to you," he said. He spoke directly to my son. "You're a boy. She's a bad mommy. It's child abuse."

He took pictures of us, although I asked him not to; he threatened me. "Now everyone will know," he said. "You'll see."

I called the police. They came, they took their report, they complimented the skirt. Still, my son does not feel safe today. He wants to know: "Is the man coming back? The bad man? Is he going to shout more unkind things about my skirt? Is he going to take more pictures?"

I can't say for sure. But I can say this: I will not be intimidated. I will not be made to feel vulnerable or afraid. I will not let angry strangers tell my son what he can or cannot wear.

The world may not love my son for who he is, but I do. I was put on this earth to make sure he knows it.

I will shout my love from street corners.

I will defend, shouting, his right to walk down the street in peace, wearing whatever items of clothing he wants to wear.

I will show him, in whatever way I can, that I value the person he is, trust in his vision for himself, and support his choices---no matter what anybody else says, no matter who tries to stop him or how often.

Our family has a motto. The motto is this:

We are loving.

We are kind.

We are determined and persistent.

We are beautiful and brave.

We know who we are. Angry strangers will not change who we are. The world will not change who we are---we will change the world.

































Jen's Facebook post has been met with an outpouring of support since she posted her story.

It's been shared over 51,000 times, and the comments have been empowering and supportive overall. Sure, there will always be haters. And yes, tutus are frilly, sparkly garments often associated with girls and princesses, sugar and spice and everything nice. But is there a rule that says boys can't also love those things? Nope.

Jen's not alone in her open-minded approach to her kid's self-expression. Charlize Theron was recently criticized after her son was photographed dressed as Elsa from "Frozen," but she supported his choices just like Jen did.

Kudos to Jen (and other parents like her!) for encouraging this awesome display of self-expression. And kudos to her young son for not letting small-minded people get in the way of his desire to express himself!

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These stressed-out parents got help from a surprising source: total strangers.

They say "it takes a village" to raise a child. And sometimes, they're totally right.

Whoever invented children obviously never intended for them to be taken out in public. Us parents only have two hands to wrangle them with. We can only run so fast as we chase them through a crowd.

We only have so much patience!

Sometimes, we need a little help. And for every person who rolls their eyes when they hear a baby on a plane, or for every cafe that threatens to discipline your kids if they disrupt other diners, there are tons of people who understand the struggle and are happy to lend a helping hand.

Here are five stories of random strangers stepping in to help parents in need to remind you that we're all in this together:

1. A kind lady cut up this mom's food so she could breastfeed her son.

Photo by Briar Mcqueen, used with permission.

For parents of young kids, going out to eat can be a small pleasure in a day full of diapers and tantrums. Well — if the kids cooperate, that is.

"Today was the first time I went out for breakfast alone with my 8 week old son," Briar Mcqueen recently wrote on Facebook. Immediately, she had her hands full. Her son, Jaxon, started crying for food.

So she put her own food aside and fed him.

"After a few minutes this older lady walked up to me, I was scared, thinking she was gonna tell me to put my boob away, instead she starts cutting up my breakfast for me and said 'what a good mama you are, we can't have your food getting cold can we.'"

What a sweet surprise.

"I honestly could have cried," Briar wrote.

2. This mom couldn't get her baby to fall asleep on a plane. But the woman next to her could.

Photo by Rebekkah Garvison, used with permission.

Flying with a baby is every parent's nightmare. And for Rebekkah Garvison, that nightmare arrived in full force on a recent flight. Her young daughter, Rylee, wouldn't stop crying. The plane was full, and it hadn't even taken off yet.

It was going to be a long ride.

But when Rebekkah changed seats to get a little more room, she got an amazing response from her new seatmate, Nyfesha Miller, who offered to try her hand at calming the little one down.

"As soon as she had her, Rylee was looking out the window and stopped crying," Rebekkah wrote on Facebook. "When we got in the air she fell right asleep and slept in her lap the whole flight until we got to our gate. [Nyfesha] kept saying it wasn't a problem at all and it was actually a comforting feeling for her. She even carried her off the plane and held her so I could get the stroller and carseat put back together so I wasn't struggling to try and do it all alone."

"You will never understand how happy this act of kindness has made my family," Rebekkah wrote.

3. For these parents, all hell broke loose at a restaurant. The kindness of two strangers made things a little easier.

Photo by Melissa Wistehuff, used with permission.

Murphy's Law says that everything that can go wrong will go wrong. That's exactly what happened to the Wistehuff family during a recent trip to a local restaurant.

First, their youngest son, Ian, threw an epic, screaming, flailing tantrum. Then, with Ian still losing it, their older daughter Luca said she felt like she was going to throw up. The parents, Melissa and Jason, divided and conquered as best they could. But there was no denying the disaster at hand. They asked for the check in a hurry...

...only, the waiter explained, the tab had already been picked up by a fellow diner who was impressed with their patient parenting. Another nearby diner then offered to pay the tip.

For the Wistehuffs, it was one less thing to stress about in a chaotic moment.

“Just when you think that the world is putting you down, they’re not. They’re picking you up,” Melissa told Yahoo! Parenting. “They completely changed our night.”

4. A couple of kind words were exactly what these parents needed to hear during a stressful evening out.


Photo by Stephanie Hartman, used with permission.

Stephanie and Arick Hartman's son Avery was born early. Very early. He came into the world after only 25 weeks, weighing just over one pound. He also, unsurprisingly, came with a lot of health problems.

After a few months, though, the Hartmans were feeling confident enough to take Avery out to his first dinner in public.

"It wasn’t long before he vomited. All over Arick’s shirt," Stephanie wrote for The Mighty. Arick passed him over to Stephanie. In case she was feeling left out, Avery vomited on her, too!

"We were unaware that all of this had attracted the attention of our neighbors. ... They were middle aged and decked out head-to-toe in biker leather," Stephanie wrote. "For a few minutes they admired Avery, but it was what that man said before they left that will stick with me forever. He put a heavy hand on my husband's shoulder. 'I want you to know, being a dad isn’t easy. But you. You’re doing a great job.' He looked at me. 'You both are.'"

5. This guy did his job with one hand and soothed one mom's baby with the other.

Photo by Coty Vincent, used with permission.

Coty Vincent was not having a great day. She was trying to secure a rental car following an accident, and on top of that, she had her hands full with her young twins.

As anyone who has ever rented a car can tell you, the process is not usually a quick one. Thankfully, as Coty's restless twins began to squirm, a friendly Enterprise employee stepped up to the plate.

"While he helped me with my rental due to a hit and run accident, he held one of my twin sons as I don't have a double stroller," Coty wrote on Facebook. "One of the most compassionate and caring people I've ever met. We need more people like John who go that extra step. "

To all the kind people out there who are willing to help soothe, wrangle, feed, or just hold our kids: thank you.

We might not want to admit it, but as a parent myself, I know that we're not always sure we can do this on our own.

One day, when we find ourselves out and about without our kids and we see a young parent struggling with a powder-keg toddler or a fussy infant, we'll be more than happy to pay it forward.

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