Snow began falling in the late morning yesterday, and by school dismissal time there was about three inches on the ground. Nevertheless, Lynn was able to leave with other teens from our church for the Winterfest Gathering in Lancaster, a town about thirty miles from here. This is not a winter church camp, it's a convention held in a resort hotel (that is, one with a pool and video game room). Today dawned clear and bright, the snow was gone from driveways and side streets, and, since I am quite capable of moving around and providing for my basic needs even if home alone, Ron decided it was a good day to replace our compact disc player.

We were in the first generation of CD owners back in the early 80s when it was still "gee whiz" technology. When I met Ron in 1983 I still had all my music on 12-inch vinyl. He owned a portable but powerful "boom box" that played cassette tapes, a gift to himself in his new "single life." He was serious about building his library of orchestral music. Although I love that kind of music (I once thought Tchaikovsky was a family friend), I'd put my money into "platters" of pop music -- The Beatles, The Doors, Peter, Paul and Mary, Crosby, Stills & Nash. I did own a few "classical" pieces -- the Rachmaninoff piano concertos, some Beethoven symphonies, Verdi's Requiem. I played these on a portable "stereo," the kind where the turntable swings up and the speakers swing in on hinges and close with hasps like a piece of luggage.

After we got married Ron bought a snazzy new set of components -- a receiver, a tape deck, a turntable, and deluxe speakers, all of which he installed on the built-in bookshelves in our family room. My 12-inch platters occupied six linear feet of bottom shelf, and the tapes were housed (alphabetically by composer and genre) in special drawers that fit beside the LPs. But he quickly began talking about the new digital "compact disc" technology that was going to change the way audiophiles and music devotees enjoyed their music.

I was pregnant in the winter of 1985 when we bought our last LP -- Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem. My favorite part was the Pie Jesu, Sarah Brightman's high sweet voice twining with a boy soprano's heavier tones. I'd listen to it as a meditation piece, and when it was over I'd have to get up and either shut the thing off or raise the tone arm and reposition it approximately at the spot I thought that selection should begin. Considering the way we do things now, that seems extremely cumbersome and primitive. We bought a CD player that summer.

Just before Christmas the CD player began to exhibit signs of terminal old age. Tracking was unreliable, and sometimes it wouldn't grab the disc at all. And so, early this morning, Ron removed it from its accustomed place and took it in for a look-see..

The CD player was beyond hope. What we have now is a state-of-the-art music CD player (a three-disc changer -- our old one was probably the last surviving non-portable single disc device in Pennsylvania). It's a little larger than the old one -- longer front to back. It wouldn't fit in the spot the old one occupied. The best solution was to remove the turntable, which we almost never use, and install the new CD player there. We put the turntable in the farthest corner of the bottom shelf, connected to nothing, a kind of bookend for the six feet of musical information that is now rendered inaccessible.

I have my own CD player in my study, and slowly, as whim and disposable income permit, I have been replacing the beloved tunes of my musical youth. I have the Beatles and Peter, Paul and Mary and Dylan and Springsteen on CD, but most of what I have is new stuff -- Tracy Chapman and Sarah McLachlan and U2. In recent years I've thought of putting the old stuff on tape -- we don't have a CD "burner" (yet) -- but that's a wish that hasn't translated into action, given other priorities.

Most of the stuff is available on CD, and I'll continue to buy "historical" music from time to time (for some reason I don't have any Rolling Stones in any form). But some of it is unavailable that way -- does anyone really plan to convert the work of The Fabulous Fabian to CD? It's my fear of loss, an enormous reluctance to say a final goodbye, that is at work here. I look at the disabled turntable, and my bandaged knee that reminds me that I'm getting older and not necessarily better, and I feel a definite sadness.