My father' s family is not a musical family. They are a family of words. My brother has my father's dark hair, his love of a good argument. I take after my mother. From her I inherited a curious nature, a sense of adventure, bright red hair. I did not, contrary to her hopes, inherit a talent for the piano. That fact was established beyond doubt after unsuccessful attempts to draw music from me. The piano lessons began when I was four. My mother was convinced that I would be a child Mozart. She found the ideal teacher--Madame Oblenka, a strict Russian woman, whose pursed lips were enough to frighten a wild horse into submission. Madame Oblenka, who expected a little Mozart, was not very delighted to find a little girl banging her fists on the keys. I tried to please her. "Feel the music," she urged. I "felt" it and winced    my ear--for what is more unpleasant than a series of wrong notes played continuously? She "felt" my music, too, which is why she always left with an angrier expression than when she came. Once, when I was ten, I managed to record one of my own rehearsals  . In order to escape my practice sessions, I would close myself behind the door of the piano room, put on the tape recording, and read until the tape had finished. That method worked for a week, until my mother began to wonder why I always missed the same B-sharp. She knocked on the door, and, receiving no answer, came in to check on me and found that I had fallen asleep while the tape of my performance played on and on. I was twelve when my parents finally acknowledged that my hidden talent was not about to _ any time soon. My mother, refusing to admit defeat, told me to pick another instrument. "Choose anything you want, Honey," she said, assuming that freedom of choice would inspire devotion. I thought long and hard and chose the drums. My parents, sensitive to noise, would be less than overjoyed by a daily bombardment of playing. I imagined my father in his study, cotton wads in his ears. I worked my way through several other instruments before my mother hit on another idea. Maybe I wasn't meant to be an instrumentalist. Realizing that drama might be more suited to my talents, Mom took me to a drama teacher. However, he put me backstage, painting scenery. Once I recovered from my sense of injury, I realized the wisdom of his choice. I loved the active, practical backstage world, and I discovered that I had a knack for constructing and painting. I loved the challenge of taking our scanty   supplies and using them to make something beautiful. Imagining a scene and then seeing it emerge before me--this, to me, was close to magic. I'm a sculptor now, and every day I experience afresh the joy of being fully absorbed in the act of artistic creation. It's a wonderful, blissful   feeling. I realize that my parents, in their misguided attempts to interest me in music, were trying to give me this feeling. And now I feel grateful. Perhaps they went about it in the wrong way, but their hearts were in the right place. The author's mother can be best described as   _  .
devoted and stubborn encouraging and independent helpful and considerate hardworking and generous