trapped once more.

the Rovanows are downstairs with the rest of my family, drinking tea in the Giuseppe sofas my mother had imported from Venice last week. mother envies the Rovanows' perfect and well-polished daughters. they've been playing Chopin the whole morning and now mother keeps sending the maid to come and get me, insisting on that I play La Campanella. "Miss, they are all waiting for you," says the maid with a broken English behind my locked door. "Your mother wants you downstairs immediately."

She knows I can't play with an audience. She knows - still she keeps sending the maid to come and get me. "All those piano lessons, Aurora, all those expensive piano lessons - and for what?" she said the last time the Rovanows came over for lunch.

"You should be grateful - do you even realize how much you have?" says my mother, the materialist, but she keeps forgetting that all I ever wanted was to learn how to play the guitar, and that she kept refusing, saying that the guitar certainly wasn't something nice and well-behaved girls wasted their time on.

Merry Christmas everyone
Aurora