When the music came over the air I pulled the car to the side of the road. In order to hear every note. For those notes evoked two images. The first was of a beautiful woman at one with her piano. The other was of a hapless, hopeless creature strapped in her wheelchair.

The music was, I think, a Chopin polonaise. The image of the pianist was a memory of my mother, who often performed that music. The creature we will deal with later.

I was told that when my mother was a girl, people fell in love with her music. She grew up in Oswego in upstate New York. On Saturday mornings she would scamper aboard a train to Syracuse. The conductors doted on her. Because her father, my grandfather, worked for the railroad. And because she was a regular on that train.

I can easily imagine her. A lithe and lively girl, dashing down the platform to catch her train with seconds to spare. I see her tripping up the steps to Syracuse University's School of Music. I picture her flummoxing back down to chase the music sheets that escaped her clutches.

Her sister, my Aunt Jule, told me my mother could play any music she saw or heard. That she awed and enchanted her piano teachers. That the lessons in, and intricacies of piano, were playthings to her.