Miles and miles and miles of flat red soil. Seventy miles between any signs of habitation. The only things to look at were the mirages on the road, the rounds of grey-green scrub that would grow where they stubbornly could, and the whirly-winds, as we called them ­ tiny tornados whipping up the dry dirt and carrying it who knows where.

My mother, father, brother and I were in a car driving hundreds of miles to see my grandpa in the country town of Temora, New South Wales. We had begun our journey in Adelaide, a beautiful city on Australia's south coast, and our home. Grandpa was a retired farmer, a widower, who used to tell us grandkids with a loving twinkle that our "blood was worth bottlin'." He didn't have a piano in his house, but his friends did ­ a brother and sister. They ran a farm ­ wheat and livestock ­ a few miles out of town, and grandpa helped them out.

They asked us all to dinner, or "to tea" as the evening meal is called there. Afterward they asked me to play the piano. I was 13 or so. And I played the piece Grandpa most loved to hear on this little old country upright: Schubert's Impromptu in A flat, Op. 90, no. 4. When grandpa loved something his face would get sad. Mine does too when I play the piece he loved. I miss him.

Stephanie Wendt