by Lucie Shores

Created on: July 08, 2009   Last Updated: January 13, 2010

The young woman focused on the man in front of her, hoping he would speak.  The concert had been like nothing the small community had ever heard and everyone was speechless. She asked for his autograph, which the Spaniard gladly gave.  Then he turned to a friend who clarified that they would arrange for her to play in his voice studio that quarter.  She murmured, "Thank you", and left, followed by their voices speaking Spanish.  "Es gwapa", one of them said. "Si" was the reply.

Eleven years earlier she had been bound to her walker by a brace that helped correct a genetic bone problem. Drawn by the patterns of the black and white keys of the old piano, barely visible from her vantage point, she'd taught herself to move across the room by using the furniture and pushing the brace on the floor.  As soon as she could reach the old piano with its nicked keys, gray spaces of lost ivories and the rounded ebony worn down by the years, it became her playground.  When she was given a piano book she quickly made the connection between the black circles on lines and spaces and the keys they represented.  

Many years later she could still remember every detail of the impression the shapes of the notes and markings. She had been fascinated with them from the beginning. The marks came to mean more to her than variations on a map of the keyboard.  By her ninth birthday she was allowed to have lessons and for ten years she played the piano, not begrudgingly, coaxed and cajoled but as if she were in an amusement park.  It was impossible to pull her away most days.  Translating sound from the ebony and ivory keyboard was easy, as if someone were leaning over her shoulder, guiding her fingers over the keys, pressing her into the melodies created just for her hands.

Prokofiev, the small Russian composer, seemed the most familiar.  Somehow his quirky sketches attracted her long before any teacher would allow them into her lessons.  They were numbered from 1 to 20, called "Visions Fugitives".  The patterns of sound were seamless, leading from one to the next so that as the sound died away from one she could begin any other and continue that way for hours.  

The lessons she imagined were where she ultimately learned how to make music. Other teachers had said, "Make it sound 'grand' or 'delicate' or 'distant'".  No one ever explained how.  Accustomed to staying in one place, her unsteady frame welcomed the

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