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My brothers and I spent an inordinate amount of time with our mother when we were children, not only because we went to school where she worked, as the head of the middle school, but because she loved being with kids. She was a bit of a child herself. She had married when she was seventeen, and in some ways never lost the teen-ager inside her. Over the summer, she would study the names of Northeastern birds in her Audubon books and, with utter focus, write a list of the ones she’d seen. She had a vivid sense of what makes children feel safe, and she believed in a child’s experience of the world. Students trusted her, even when they’d been sent to her office and she was asking them why in the world they had done whatever it was they had done.
我和哥哥孩童時(shí)期時(shí)有無(wú)數(shù)呆在母親身邊的日子，不僅僅是因?yàn)槲覀冊(cè)谀赣H當(dāng)校長(zhǎng)的學(xué)校里上學(xué)，更因?yàn)樗矚g和我們這些孩子們呆在一起。她自己也有一點(diǎn)孩子氣。從她17歲結(jié)婚后，在某些方面來(lái)說(shuō)她一直保留著她內(nèi)心的童真。夏天結(jié)束的時(shí)候，她就研究她的奧特朋書(shū)籍里東北鳥(niǎo)類(lèi)的名稱(chēng)并且全神貫注，還會(huì)列出她看到過(guò)的種類(lèi)。她具有明顯的使孩子們感到安全的氣質(zhì)，相信孩子眼中看到的世界。學(xué)生都信任她，即使他們因?yàn)樽隽艘恍┍凰J(rèn)為不當(dāng)做的事被送去她的辦公室，接受她的疑問(wèn)。
She spent hours with my brothers and me, making gingerbread houses or sledding or cutting out paper snowflakes. She taught us all to make apple pie, and read “The Black Stallion” out loud to us at night—though she also had a habit of promising to read a book out loud and then giving up partway through. The boxes of memorabilia she kept for each of us were always disorganized. One of the things I found there after she died was a card I had made for her birthday when I was about six. It began:
TO MOM
I LOVE YOU.
I LOVE THE STORIES
YOU MAKE WITH ME.
她花了很多時(shí)間和我和哥哥在一起，做姜餅屋，滑雪橇還有剪紙雪花。她教我們做蘋(píng)果派，還會(huì)在晚上大聲讀 “黑神駒”給我們聽(tīng)——盡管她有在答應(yīng)了要大聲讀完一整本書(shū)后總是半途放棄的習(xí)慣。這個(gè)她保存著關(guān)于我們的重大事件的盒子里總是被翻的雜亂。她死后我找到其中一件東西，那是我六歲那年送給她的生日卡片。上面寫(xiě)著：
致媽媽
我愛(ài)你
我愛(ài)你講述的
所有故事
On a hazy October morning, after months of chemotherapy, my mother and I drove down to New York-Presbyterian Hospital in the near-dark, listening to traffic reports like all the other commuters. The cancer had spread to her lungs and her liver. This wasn’t likely to be a story that ended well. But, in a last-ditch effort, we had enrolled her in an experimental treatment program. I thought, darkly, that the creeping cars around us were like souls wandering in Hades. My mother was quiet. I worried that she resented my fussing about what she was eating and whether my father had given her the right pain medication.
在一個(gè)霧蒙蒙的十月上午，結(jié)束多月的化療后，傍晚時(shí)我和母親開(kāi)車(chē)去紐約長(zhǎng)老教會(huì)醫(yī)院，一邊和所有搭乘公車(chē)的乘客一樣聽(tīng)著交通報(bào)道。癌細(xì)胞當(dāng)時(shí)已經(jīng)擴(kuò)散到了她的肺和肝，這不像是一個(gè)有好結(jié)局的故事。但是，在義無(wú)反顧的努力下，我們讓她參加了一個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)性的治療項(xiàng)目。我思考著，暗沉沉的天色，周?chē)徛苿?dòng)的車(chē)流就像地獄中游蕩著的幽靈包圍著我們。我的母親保持著安靜。我很擔(dān)心她會(huì)對(duì)我過(guò)分關(guān)心她的飲食而感到不滿(mǎn)，還擔(dān)心我的父親是否給她拿對(duì)了止痛藥。
