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I was angry with him for that, but angrier with myself for having become one of those ancient bores whose highly selective memories of the past become transparently dishonest even to small children. I tried to break the habit, but must have failed. Between us there was a dispute about time. He looked upon the time that had been my future in a disturbing way. My future was his past, and being young, he was indifferent to the past.
我對他很生氣，但我更氣憤的是我自己居然變成了一個令人討厭的老古董，專門挑過去的某些事情回憶，這些回憶顯然連孩子們也覺得不可信。我曾試著改掉這個習慣，但肯定是沒改掉。關于“時代”，我們之間有著很大的分歧。兒子用一種令人不安的眼光看待那些曾是我的未來的年代，我的未來便是他的過去，可因為年輕，他對過去毫無興趣。
As I hovered over my mother's bed listening for some signals from her childhood, I realized that this same dispute had existed between her and me. When she was young, with life ahead of her, I had been her future and resented it. Instinctively, I wanted to break free, and cease being a creature defined by her time. Well, I had finally done that, and then with my own children I had seen my exciting future becoming their boring past.
當我徘徊在母親的床邊，接收著她那從遙遠的童年發出來的零星信號時，我意識到，同樣的分歧也曾存在于我和她之間。當她年輕時，生活展現在她面前，對于她而言，我就是她的未來，但我卻討厭這種狀況。我本能地想要掙脫，想要自由，希望我不再被她的時代所界定。我最后成功地做到了這一點，可從我自己的孩子身上，我卻看到自己那振奮人心的未來正在變成他們乏味的過去。
These hopeless end-of-the-line visits with my mother made me wish I had not thrown off my own past so carelessly. We all come from the past, and children ought to know what it was that went into their making, to know that life is a braided cord of humanity stretching up from time long gone, and that it cannot be defined by the span of a single journey from diaper to shroud.
母親在生命的最后階段經歷著這些不抱希望的探望，這使我后悔不該那么輕易地拋棄往日的時光。每個人都來自于過去，孩子們應當知道他們傳承了什么，他們應該知道，生命是由過去到未來、由無數人的生命編織起來的一條人類共同紐帶，而不是被簡單定義為一個個體由生到死的生命過程。
