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I wonder whether it's true--that we become our mothers when we reach a certain stage in life. Somewhere along the line, I read that, and it struck me as odd. I'll never be my mother, I thought, amused at such a notion. To me, we looked nothing alike, and she was a saint in my eyes. She wouldn't have done the things I've done in my life. My halo was tilted years ago.

To many folks, my mom was the tiny little lady in the enormous black coat and beret, flitting on foot from our shoe repair shop on Front Street to teach a piano lesson on the south side of town. She would often set out on her journey an hour before a scheduled lesson with someone because her rapidly moving short legs and small feet took five steps for someone else's average of one, and so it seemed it took her many steps longer to arrive somewhere. But she trudged through rain and snow, all for the love of a pupil whose parents might not be able to pay her $3.00 an hour fee, and still, she taught them with love.

I envied her students. I had lessons with Miss Kopiak because Mom felt I'd listen better that way. She was just as stubborn in her determination that I would practice every night, first on the piano, later on the violin.

Many a night, Mom would bribe me to pick up the violin and practice, a deplorable task to me. A dollar? Five? she would ask. There were always holidays--both Chanuka and Christmas--to consider in our many-cultured family.

I wouldn't bribe a child of mine to practice any more than I'd trudge through rain and snow for a pittance I might not even receive. But she did, and she never complained, just as she never complained for having bore me at a time when most women were done with having babies. Despite her diminuitive size, she was a towering pillar of strength in my eyes. Antiques, Persian rugs, fine linens, and a concert grand were the world of her youth. She married for love, and there wasn't much money. If she ever looked back in longing for what had been, I never knew. And as I look back now, I know she worried over me, just as I did with one of my sons not so long ago. Yet no matter what life presented her with at any time, she always seemed to have the capacity to look forward, never longing for what had been.

Mom's heart was as grand and as large as the universe, but she wasn't a person of many words. To her, no greater expression of love could be found than through her music, and she gave freely and openly to everyone. And as her life unfolded, she became, in a sense, a global ambassador, making friends with people from around the world.

She was a concert pianist who seemed to make choirs of angels sing. While most girls had still been learning to cook and sew in the years following World War I, she, still in her teens, was bound for Europe to further her blossoming career. Music was like a prayer to her. It had soothed her fears when she watched the signs of doom settling in over Germany, and it later comforted her when she, suddenly widowed, was left with three children to raise. With gentle command, a soft touch and graceful determination, she would concentrate on her work, practicing each note, kneading each phrase into a work of art. There were few days in her life that those fingers didn't touch the ivory keys. Even when she was well into her eighties, she still played like she did on the now-antiqued steel records she'd made in her teens.

She often ironed late at night, humming unconsciously on a solitary note while she pushed the bulky steaming press back and forth. I teased her and sang "Poor Johnny One-Note" to her. My mother would smile, then laugh with me, but less than a minute later, that soft monotone on middle C would start all over again. I earned my way through college with my voice, but Mom's sense of humor was far greater than mine.

Her sense of humor, on the other hand, didn't extend to her inspiration in the kitchen. She would get irritated with me for telling people she couldn't cook, reminding me ever so truthfully that my brothers and I weren't worse for the wear. We never had a plain hamburger. Hers were Hawaiian Burgers with Pineapple, Cranberry Burgers--any exotic combinations, but never ordinary burgers. And once, she decided we'd have broiled lamb and a spinach-rice concoction for an elegant noontime meal. After she set the lamb on fire and discovered the rice was coconut, she must have decided she'd finally gone too far, and she began to count on Louise, the cook at the drugstore a few blocks away, for our lunches. Dinnertime, on the other hand, remained the same: She leaned heavily on creamed anything on toast.

Not that she didn't cook anything well. She did. Her chicken soup was a true delight, although the matzo balls were from a jar, and like her roast chicken and stuffed breast of veal, her masterpiece roast beef basted in cream of mushroom soup was truly fit for a king. On the other hand, we were inclined to eat every drop at dinner because these extraordinary meals were one-shot experiences. The leftovers were mere shadows of their previous lives.

To her, leftovers had to be hot, and we cringed at the sight of the cast iron frying pan in her hand. What was left of the roast chicken went in first, then the rice and finally the peas. The meal was ready when the chicken was dry like a martini, and the rice and peas guaranteed to break at least one tooth. But had she cooked like my grandmother and most other mothers did, I would never have learned how to cook. Yet what she lacked in the kitchen, was always forgotten when she sat down at the piano.

Any animal capable of loving music--or her cooking--also found a place in her heart. We shared a love of cats, although she wasn't as eager as I to admit it. Squeaker, a playful kitten I'd found in the woods, found her weak spot first. In the middle of the night, much to Mom's delight, Squeaker danced across the piano keys. Grandpa lived with us at the time, and Squeaker soon became the main topic of conversation at breakfast every morning.

Several years later, after I had married, a tiny orange kitten appeared at our door, begging for food. For a few weeks, behind my husband's back, I fed our little stray, but soon, my husband began to suspect what I was doing, and our oldest son and I plotted to save our new-found friend. We took the kitten to Mom, who protested she wanted no part of him. But that night, she made muffins. Discovering she and the cat had similar tastes, she named him Muffin.

Mom and I always had very strong bonds that reached across physical space. I lost her the day after Christmas 1995. On Christmas, the last day of Chanuka, Monday, I heard her calling my name. On Tuesday, I kissed her for the last time. And on Tuesday afternoon, I laid down to try to sleep. Sleep never came easily, although I reached the stage of twilight. And in that twilight, I saw her sitting there, perhaps two feet from me. Her white hair was full and perfect again, done just the way she always liked it. She was clad in a brown tri-colored poncho my sister-in-law made for her. She was beautiful. But she sat in profile to me, turned more away than toward me, and I silently called to her to see her face one more time. And just as suddenly she was gone from my eyes.

Her hands, small, soft and gentle, felt cool to my feverish forehead in childhood. They also filled our home with the music of the angels, crystal and pure, passionate emotion from Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Schubert... But when two fingers curled toward her palm two years before the end, I had to learn to let go. She was ready and eager--just as she had been throughout her life. I wasn't. She asked me not to cry, but I couldn't promise nor could I let go.

Recently, I've seen her in the mirror--a spot of red edging across my nose, just as hers had been. My eyes are brown. Hers were blue. My hair is still long and brown in contrast to the short hair she adopted when she married. In the still of the night, I can often hear the sounds of that angelic choir through those graceful fingertips on the piano keys. And sometimes, when I least expect it, I hear her laughter bursting forth from my lips; at other times, just a word or two. When I scold the kids, I hear her saying what I hated to hear in my childhood: "Actions speak louder than words." I wonder whether they hate that too. At night, when I'm tired, I feel as if my body moves in the same way I can still see her body moving in my mind's eye. They're fleeting moves and sounds, but they're there. Odd, I think. I'm not my mother. I can never be like her.