The kid approached the piano reverently. He sat down on its bench and interlocked his fingers, stretching them the way every piano virtuoso from Van Cliburn to Blind Mellow Jelly has done.

He found his spot on the sheet music and began to play. The kid was, finally, at peace.

Peace isn't easy to find for Jordan Masuca. Moments before sitting down at the upright, he was running through the halls of the Walnut Terrace Recreation Center in Raleigh, chasing and fleeing his 3-year-old sister, just being a regular 9-year-old kid.

Only more so. You see, Jordan is not a regular 9-year-old kid. He was diagnosed with ADHD and autism when he was 2, and his mother, Kimberly Masuca, spent years trying to find something he enjoys.

"We tried sports, but he wasn't interested," Masuca said. "Then, just for the heck of it, I put an old electric keyboard in his room that I'd had when I was a child ... . One night I heard music."

The music, which has a visibly soothing effect on Jordan, has rarely stopped since then.

"Keeping focused is very difficult. He's in his own world, but when he sits down at the piano he's completely different," Masuca said as her son played piano in the background.

"He has been kicked out of six day cares," she said. "It's not the easiest thing to teach a child like Jordan, so when somebody like Mrs. Waters comes into your child's life, you appreciate it. Jordan has a special gift and Mrs. Waters has a special gift."

"Mrs. Waters" is Theressa Waters, a piano teacher in the city of Raleigh's "Play It Again, Peanut" music program. Her special gift is patience. On a recent Saturday afternoon, I observed as she tutored with supernatural grace prepubes-cent pianists-in-training. She never raised her voice, never struck a note of exasperation as they played halting but ultimately recognizable versions of Christmas standards.

The Peanut piano program is designed to expose children to music lessons at less-than-market rates. The cost of the lessons recently went up to $50 a month after several years of being $25.

That's still a blessing to families such as the Masucas and Vaughans. Calvin and Jeanette Vaughan have been bringing their son Caleb from Durham to lessons with Waters for three years.

Waters said that as far as she knows, none of the hundreds of students she has taught since 1989 have become professional musicians. Several, though -- including one who is autistic -- have gone to college.

Seeing her son onstage, playing professionally, would be fine with Masuca, but she'll be happy with less.

"I was told that the best he would ever be able to do is wipe off tables" for a living, she said. "I don't have to worry about Jordan as much as I used to, because when I see him at the piano and think of the obstacles he's overcome -- I feel that if he can do that, he can do a lot of other things."

She thought she was buying a piano for Jordan to practice on at home -- "He won't touch the electric keyboard" anymore, she said -- but the cockroach to whom she made four $50 payments split with her loot.

If you can help Masuca get a piano for her son, call her at 455-4700.