Robin Meloy Goldsby has just learned her new CD, "Songs From a Castle," is in the first round of nominations in the New Age category of the 50th Annual Grammy Awards. And her composition, "Lerbach Nocturne," is included in the first round of nominations for Best Instrumental Composition.

Are her parents, Bob and Ann Rawsthorne, who live at Lake Latonka, near Mercer, jumping for joy? You bet. Her father played percussion on "Mister Rogers Neighborhood" for 30 years.

Music for this family just seems to happen naturally ... but not without ups and downs, hard work and practice, practice, practice.

"Basically, I don't much approve of contests for musicians," replied Robin when I asked her about this latest honor.

"If it was up to me, I'd give every one of us a trophy, a blue ribbon, a certificate of achievement just for hanging in there, practicing and finding a way to make a living doing something we love.

"On the other hand, winning a Grammy would expose my music to a much wider audience, and that would be marvelous."

Robin lives in Wahlscheid, Germany, with her own family (husband John and children, Curtis and Julia) and plays piano at Schlosshotel Lerbach. But much of her life here was spent in Chatham Village on Mount Washington before New York gigs and her move to Germany in 1994.

I have the CD, and it would relieve anybody's stressful day as it is quiet and serene listening. Dinner music, if you will. Maybe better than yoga, certainly better than a pill.

She says as a child she often fantasized about visiting a real castle, and that "Songs" pays tribute to all the places she once dreamed about.

"I've built a few castles of my own all these years, as these invisible palaces exist in my cherished memories of family and friends, the home I've made with my husband and children and the music I've continued to write as I approach my 50th birthday."

A few years ago I wrote about Robin's book, "Piano Girl," in which she told the story of going from playing piano in smoky saloons to playing in a castle in Germany. Her book opened doors, including an hourlong feature on Marian McPartland's "Piano Jazz" on National Public Radio and a performance and reading at Steinway Hall in New York City. Now, a potential Grammy looms.

As a grown woman, Robin says she is still attempting to capture and compose the ever-elusive "sound track" to her life.

"I listen to laughter, and I expect to hear the silvery trill of flutes. I experience sadness and wonder when the string section will kick in. I watch a child walking on a beach at sunset and wait for the swell of the French horns to overtake me. I think, 'where's the orchestra?'"

You can see why she plays and writes music so well. She's a dreamer.

She also knows that silence is often the only appropriate accompaniment for many of life's major and minor events.

"Yes, but I've also noticed that the right music at the right time can make any place feel like a castle," she adds. "The kind of place I once dreamed of" as a little girl, "when a handful of fairy dust and an open door were the only things that mattered."

Back then, she would dream of being dressed as a fairy princess, stepping through an enormous wooden door, then ambling down a majestic staircase into the waiting arms of the future.

"I've come a long way from fairy wings, glue-gunned sequined dresses, plastic tiaras and the desire to wear an angel costume while strumming a zither," she says. "But in the four decades that I've been playing dress-up and making music, my desire to be surrounded by beauty has never altered course."

She doesn't need a Grammy. But wouldn't it be a beautiful addition to her ongoing fairy tale?