Finding Joanne and Mona

尋找喬安妮和莫娜

When Jobs was thirty-one, a year after his ouster from Apple, his mother Clara, who was a smoker, was stricken with lung cancer. He spent time by her deathbed, talking to her in ways he had rarely done in the past and asking some questions he had refrained from raising before. “When you and Dad got married, were you a virgin?” he asked. It was hard for her to talk, but she forced a smile. That’s when she told him that she had been married before, to a man who never made it back from the war. She also filled in some of the details of how she and Paul Jobs had come to adopt him.

喬布斯的母親克拉拉是一個吸煙者。他31歲時，也就是在他離開蘋果公司一年之后，母親患上了肺癌。在她彌留之際，他陪在她的病床邊，用以往少有的方式跟她聊天，問了一些一直壓在心底的問題。“跟爸爸結婚的時候，你是處女嗎？”他問道。她雖然難以啟齒，卻還是努力地給了他一個微笑。她這才告訴他，之前她結過婚，她的前夫上了戰場就再沒回來。她還透露了一些她和保羅·喬布斯如何領養他的細節。

Soon after that, Jobs succeeded in tracking down the woman who had put him up for adoption. His quiet quest to find her had begun in the early 1980s, when he hired a detective who had failed to come up with anything. Then Jobs noticed the name of a San Francisco doctor on his birth certificate. “He was in the phone book, so I gave him a call,” Jobs recalled. The doctor was no help. He claimed that his records had been destroyed in a fire. That was not true. In fact, right after Jobs called, the doctor wrote a letter, sealed it in an envelope, and wrote on it, “To be delivered to Steve Jobs on my death.” When he died a short time later, his widow sent the letter to Jobs. In it, the doctor explained that his mother had been an unmarried graduate student from Wisconsin named Joanne Schieble.

大概就是在那個時候，喬布斯找到了他生母的下落。從20世紀80年代初開始，他就聘用了一個偵探，開始悄悄地尋找他的生母，但什么線索都沒有找到。后來喬布斯注意到他出生證上一個舊金山醫生的名字。“他的姓名在電話簿上可以查到，所以我給他打了個電話。”喬布斯回憶說。那個醫生沒幫上忙。他聲稱他的記錄在一場火災中全部燒毀了。不過那不是真的。事實上，就在接到喬布斯的電話后，這個醫生寫了一封信，裝在信封里封好，上面寫著“我死后交給史蒂夫·喬布斯”。不久后他就去世了，他的遺孀把這封信寄給了喬布斯。信中，醫生說他的母親是來自威斯康星州一個未婚的研究生，名字叫喬安妮·席貝爾。

It took another few weeks and the work of another detective to track her down. After giving him up, Joanne had married his biological father, Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, and they had another child, Mona. Jandali abandoned them five years later, and Joanne married a colorful ice-skating instructor, George Simpson. That marriage didn’t last long either, and in 1970 she began a meandering journey that took her and Mona (both of them now using the last name Simpson) to Los Angeles.

喬布斯聘請了另一位偵探，幾個月后找到了她的下落。在把喬布斯送人后，喬安妮還是嫁給了喬布斯的生父阿卜杜勒法塔赫·約翰·錢德里，他們后來又生了一個孩子，叫莫娜。錢德里5年后拋棄了她們，喬安妮又嫁給了一個滑冰教練喬治·辛普森（GeorgeSimpson）。那場婚姻也沒能長久，1970年她開始帯著莫娜四處流浪（她們倆現在都用的是辛普森的姓），后來到了洛杉磯。

Jobs had been reluctant to let Paul and Clara, whom he considered his real parents, know about his search for his birth mother. With a sensitivity that was unusual for him, and which showed the deep affection he felt for his parents, he worried that they might be offended. So he never contacted Joanne Simpson until after Clara Jobs died in early 1986. “I never wanted them to feel like I didn’t consider them my parents, because they were totally my parents,” he recalled. “I loved them so much that I never wanted them to know of my search, and I even had reporters keep it quiet when any of them found out.” When Clara died, he decided to tell Paul Jobs, who was perfectly comfortable and said he didn’t mind at all if Steve made contact with his biological mother.

喬布斯一直猶豫要不要讓保羅和克拉拉——他心目中“真正的”父母——知道他在尋找自己的生母。他擔心他們不髙興，這種敏感對他來說實屬少見，從中也可以看出他對養父母的感情之深。所以直到1986年初克拉拉·喬布斯去世，他才與喬安妮·辛普森取得聯系。“我絕不希望讓他們感覺我不把他們當成父母，因為他們徹頭徹尾就是我的父母，”他回憶說，“我是那么愛他們，因此我不想讓他們知道我在尋找生母，甚至當有記者發現真相時我也會讓那些人守口如瓶。”克拉拉去世后，他決定告訴保羅·喬布斯。他父親覺得完全可以接受，并說不介意史蒂夫跟他的生母取得聯系。

So one day Jobs called Joanne Simpson, said who he was, and arranged to come down to Los Angeles to meet her. He later claimed it was mainly out of curiosity. “I believe in environment more than heredity in determining your traits, but still you have to wonder a little about your biological roots,” he said. He also wanted to reassure Joanne that what she had done was all right. “I wanted to meet my biological mother mostly to see if she was okay and to thank her, because I’m glad I didn’t end up as an abortion. She was twenty-three and she went through a lot to have me.”

這樣，史蒂夫某天給喬安妮·辛普森打了電話，說了自己是誰，并安排去洛杉磯跟她見面。后來他說這主要是出于好奇心：“我相信環境比遺傳對你的影響更大，但你還是會對你的血緣有點兒好奇。”他還想安慰喬安妮她當初把他送給別人領養是沒問題的。“我想見我的生母，主要是為了看看她過得好不好，我還要感謝她，因為我很髙興我沒有被墮胎。她當時23歲，為了把我生下來她承受了很多。”

Joanne was overcome with emotion when Jobs arrived at her Los Angeles house. She knew he was famous and rich, but she wasn’t exactly sure why. She immediately began to pour out her emotions. She had been pressured to sign the papers putting him up for adoption, she said, and did so only when told that he was happy in the house of his new parents. She had always missed him and suffered about what she had done. She apologized over and over, even as Jobs kept reassuring her that he understood, and that things had turned out just fine.

當喬布斯來到她在洛杉磯的家時，喬安妮激動不已。她知道他很出名很富有，但她不太清楚是因為什么。她的感情頓時奔涌而出。她說她當時承受了很大壓力才在他的領養文件上簽字，而且她是在被告知他會在新的父母家非常幸福才簽字的。她一直很想念他，并為她所做的事情感到痛苦。她反反復復地道歉，即使喬布斯一直安慰她說他能夠理解，而且事情的結果還好。