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We could hear it drifting out from the house, down the street to where we were playing.  The other kids would wonder where it was coming from but we knew.  We knew that we wouldn't be going in any time soon.  We recognized those melancholy chords coming from the English piano that had traveled 'round the two capes, ending up in a bar where it was traded to my father for a pool table. 100 plus years of days and foriegn lands and forgotten hands echoed from within the dark, carved wood through our mother's fingertips.

Sometimes she would hum or sing along with some old, melencholy song like The Tennessee Waltz. We knew to give her that time alone. We knew she was sad. We knew we didn't want to see the tears welling up in her chest and that faraway look in her eyes. We didn't know then that music didn't always make you happy and that someday we'd torture ourselves with the sounds of our own memories.