Falling Asleep to your Mother Playing Chopin

...Falling Asleep to Your Mother Playing Chopin You have known this music all your life years from now you are an old woman lying in a dark room alone with nothing to do anymore while eyes and ears and heart are failing remembering the quiet house when everyone was gone the only voice was music filling the emptiness with desolation a hazel color like eyes years before there wasn't time enough the child pulled your hands from the keyboard work demanded you sickness and the dying of parents you longed for silence for music to speak for you years before you longed to grow into yourself when nothing else seemed to fit not even the words in your throat how naturally your fingers slid into the glove of chords and the voice that flowed exquisite and unimpeded was also a tactile thing before that you were a child falling asleep in the next room while your mother played Chopin on the grand piano and the music sounded in your dreams as though you had made it up yourself and the next day at school you touched it like a letter in your pocket and before all of it the darkness where you floated half asleep beneath her heart Joan I. Siegel Commonweal I 8 June 4,1999...