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Soon after we returned from Europe, Bill offered to take me on another journey―this time to the place he called home.
從歐洲回國后不久，比爾又帶我踏上另外一個旅程——回他的老家。
Bill picked me up at the airport in Little Rock on a bright summer morning in late June. We made our way through the Arkansas River Valley with its low-slung magnolia trees, and into the Ouachita Mountains, stopping at overlooks and dropping by country stores so Bill could introduce me to the people and places he loved. As dusk fell, we arrived, at last, in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
6月底一個明亮的夏日之晨，比爾開車到小石城機場接我。我們開車穿過木蘭樹點綴的阿肯色河峽谷，進入沃希托山脈，一路走走停停，有時停在觀景臺，有時下車看看鄉(xiāng)村商店，比爾借此機會讓我認識他喜歡的人與景點。直到薄暮將至，兩人才到達溫泉市。
Hot Springs was Virginia Cassidy Blythe Clinton Dwire Kelley's natural element. Bill's mother was raised in nearby Hope, eighty miles to the southwest. During World War II she attended nursing school in Louisiana, and that's where she met her first husband, William Jefferson Blythe.
溫泉市的氣質(zhì)，正如比爾的母親弗吉妮亞·卡西迪·布萊思·克林頓·德懷爾·凱利堪稱相配。弗吉妮亞成長于附近的霍普市，在西南邊八十英里處。二次大戰(zhàn)期間，她到路易斯安那州的護校就讀，在那里認識了第一任丈夫威廉·杰斐遜·布萊思。
After the war, they moved to Chicago and lived on the North Side, not far from where my parents were living. When Virginia became pregnant with Bill, she went home to Hope to wait for the baby. Her husband was driving down to see her when he had a fatal accident in Missouri in May of 1946. Virginia was a twenty-three-year-old widow when Bill was born on August 19, 1946. She decided to go to New Orleans to train to become a nurse anesthetist because she knew she could make more money that way to support herself and her new son. She left Bill in the care of her mother and father, and when she got her degree, she returned to Hope to practice.
戰(zhàn)后，兩人搬到芝加哥，住在北城，距我父母當時的住處不遠。弗吉妮亞懷了比爾后，返回霍普待產(chǎn)，1946年5月，威廉從芝加哥開車回來看她，不幸在密蘇里因車禍過世。二十三歲的弗吉妮亞成了寡婦，1946年8月19日生下比爾后，弗吉妮亞決定搬到新奧爾良，接受護理麻醉師訓練，好賺更多的錢養(yǎng)活自己與兒子。她把比爾交給自己的父母照顧，待取得學位再返回霍普執(zhí)業(yè)。
