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I looked down at her purse with all its disconnected contents and remembered her visits to her home, rummaging through drawers and through closets.
我低頭看著她包里所有互不相干的東西，想到她回家時翻尋抽屜和衣櫥的情景。
Oh, Lord, I thought with sudden insight. "That walker and that purse are her home now."
“哦，上帝呀，”我茅塞頓開，“現在那助步車和那個大提包就是祖母的家。”
I began to understand that over the years my grandmother's space for living had diminished like melting butter—from endless fields and miles of freedom as a child and young mother to, with age, the constrictions of a house, then a small room in a nursing home and finally to the tightly clutched handbag and the bag on her walker.
我開始明白，在過去的幾年里，祖母的生活空間像不斷融化的黃油般漸漸縮小了，隨著年齡的增長，她生活的空間從孩提時或初為人母時自由自在的廣闊田野，漸漸變為一幢房子，再到療養院里一個小小的房間，最后縮小到緊緊抓在手里的提袋和助步車上的提包。
When the family sent her to a nursing home, it was the toughest decision it had ever had to make. We all thought she would be secure there; we would no longer have to worry about whether she had taken her medicine, or left her stove on, or was alone at night.
把祖母送進療養院是全家做出的最艱難的決定，我們都認為她在那里會很安全，我們不必擔心她是否吃了藥，是否關了火爐，晚上是否一個人在家。
But we hadn't fully understood her needs. Security for my grandmother was not in the warm room at the nursing home, with 24-hour attendants to keep her safe and well fed, nor in the family who visited and took her to visit in their homes. In her mind her security was tied to those things she could call her own—and over the years those possessions had dwindled away like sand dropping through an hourglass: first her car, sold when her eyes became bad and she couldn't drive; then some furnishings she didn't really need. Later it was the dogs she had trouble taking care of. And finally it would be her home when it became evident that she could never leave the nursing home again.
但是我們并沒有完全理解她的需求。安全對于祖母來說并不是待在療養院溫暖的房間里、有24小時良好的監護和膳食，也不是家里的人去看望她并帶她回家看看。在她看來，她的安全在于她所擁有的東西——幾年來，這些東西已經一點一點從她身邊消失，像沙漏里一點點流走的沙子：首先是她的車，在她視力下降到無法駕駛時被賣掉了；接著是一些實際上她用不著的家具；后來是那幾只她沒有能力喂養的狗；最后，當她顯然再也無法離開療養院時，她連房子也不需要了。
