尤蒂卡的午餐時(shí)光（雙語(yǔ)）

If my life were a movie I would fast-forward through junior high. My junior high years were painful. Like every junior high kid, I was dealing with awakening sexuality, and struggling with who I was and how I would make my mark in life. But I was sure I was alone with these strange feelings.

如果我的人生是一出電影,我會(huì)快進(jìn)初中求學(xué)那部分內(nèi)容。我的初中時(shí)光充滿了痛苦。像每個(gè)初中生一樣,我得面對(duì)情竇愛(ài)欲的萌芽,為認(rèn)識(shí)自我建立自我而掙扎,苦惱該如何給自己的人生烙下印記。但那時(shí),我確信自己得單獨(dú)面對(duì)這些奇怪的感受。

I was trying and failing in a number of things. I wanted to excel in athletics but had not yet figured out that that would never happen. I wasn’t academic enough to spell academic. (I’m a little surprised right now that I was able to spell that without the aid of my nifty little Microsoft Word spell checker). I was trying to gain a spot in the pecking order as a new kid in school. All the while, I remember suffering the rejection of most of my peer being cut from the basketball team, failing to play football that I so wanted to play. It was a time of questioning how girls saw me and wanting so much to be loved and accepted. To be loved and accepted seemed to me at the time something I could never, in all my life, achieve.

我嘗試過(guò)做一些事情,但都失敗了。我希望自己成為運(yùn)動(dòng)健將,但當(dāng)時(shí)沒(méi)意識(shí)到那是絕不會(huì)發(fā)生的。我學(xué)業(yè)成績(jī)不好,連“academic”這個(gè)詞都拼不出來(lái)(此刻,沒(méi)有那棒極了的微軟文檔“拼寫檢查”小功能的幫助,我也能拼出“academic”那個(gè)詞,我都感到有些吃驚)。作為學(xué)校里的一名新生,我很想躋身于校園里的社交圈子。我一直記得自己當(dāng)時(shí)遭到了大多數(shù)同齡人的排斥,被踢出籃球隊(duì),渴望踢足球卻踢不成。那時(shí)候,我會(huì)揣測(cè)女孩們眼中的自己是怎樣的,多么希望有人愛(ài)自己,有人接受自己。但那時(shí),被愛(ài)和被接受于我而言似乎是某種我這一生都不會(huì)得到的東西。

During that time I would go through the cafeteria line and eat alone, feeling unloved and unnoticed. As spring came, one day I was starting out the door and complaining that I had no one to eat with. Mom said to me, “If you want, you can come home for lunch.” That day, when lunch came, it was a beautiful spring day in the hills of central Ohio. The bell rang at noon and I bolted from the school and ran across the little village home to eat. I wondered if my mom would remember. When I got there, Mom was getting a little chicken pot pie out of the oven for me. It was a very humble lunch. It was just one of those four-for-a-dollar pot pies with little diced pieces of chicken, frozen peas and carrot in some chicken gravy.

那段時(shí)光里,我會(huì)穿過(guò)在學(xué)生餐廳里排隊(duì)的人群,獨(dú)自用餐,感覺(jué)自己被忽視且不被喜歡。冬去春來(lái),有一天,我準(zhǔn)備出門,抱怨著沒(méi)人和我一起吃飯。母親對(duì)我說(shuō):“你喜歡的話,可以回家吃午飯呀。”那天,午餐時(shí)間到了,那正是俄亥俄州中部山區(qū)一個(gè)美麗的春日。中午,鈴聲響起,我從學(xué)校跑出來(lái),跑過(guò)那個(gè)小村莊回家吃飯。不知道母親是否還記得當(dāng)時(shí)的情景。當(dāng)我回到家,母親正從烤爐里拿出一小塊雞肉餡餅給我。那是一頓簡(jiǎn)便的午餐,就是一塊那種一美元就能買到四塊的雞肉餡餅,里面有些許雞肉粒,冰凍豌豆和胡蘿卜,澆上些雞肉汁。

Mom set a cloth napkin beside my plate at the end of the table just beneath the window. I sat at our humble kitchen table in our tiny, white rented home on Maple Street in Utica. Mom listened to me while I talked about whatever was on my mind. In about 15 minutes my time was up and I ran back to school.

餐桌就放置在窗臺(tái)下,母親在餐桌邊我的碟子一旁放了塊餐巾。在我們那間位于尤蒂卡楓葉街租來(lái)的白色小房子里,我坐在廚房里那張簡(jiǎn)陋的餐桌旁。母親聽(tīng)我說(shuō)著心頭的大事小事。大約過(guò)了15分鐘,我的午休時(shí)間結(jié)束了,我跑回學(xué)校。

That was in about 1972, thirty years ago. My mom at the time was in her early thirties. She seemed so old to me then and thirty-year-olds seem like children to me now. She sat across the table for about 15 minutes and looked at me and listened to me and three decades later I remember those times with fondness. She just paid attention to me. It’s a powerful thing to pay attention to people.

那大約是在1972年,30年前發(fā)生的事了。我母親當(dāng)時(shí)才三十出頭。她那時(shí)在我看來(lái)已經(jīng)很老了。而現(xiàn)在,三十多歲的人對(duì)我來(lái)說(shuō)就像小孩。餐桌上的15分鐘里,她都坐在我對(duì)面,看著我,聽(tīng)我講話。30年后,我還會(huì)滿心歡喜地憶起那些時(shí)光。她關(guān)注的就是我。給予他人以關(guān)注是一件偉大的事。

Now you know a little more about how I see home. Home is a place where you don’t have to sit alone and eat. Home is a place where people don’t ignore you and avoid you.

現(xiàn)在,你又知道了多一些我對(duì)家的看法了。家,是一個(gè)你不需要獨(dú)自坐著吃飯的地方。家,是一個(gè)你不會(huì)被忽略或避開(kāi)的地方。

Home is a place where it doesn’t really matter that much what’s on the menu, simple things are sweet to the taste in an atmosphere of love and security and acceptance. Moms are people who listen to you when no one else is interested. And moms don’t ever think the small mundane things you do don’t matter. Moms don’t laugh at your dreams. Good moms pay attention. Great moms fix you something warm to eat and pay attention.

家,是一個(gè)吃什么其實(shí)不那么重要的地方。在一種充滿愛(ài)、安全感和被認(rèn)可的氛圍中,簡(jiǎn)單的東西品嘗起來(lái)也會(huì)顯得香甜可口。當(dāng)別人都對(duì)你的事不感興趣時(shí),母親是那個(gè)會(huì)傾聽(tīng)你心聲的人。而且,對(duì)于你做的那些無(wú)聊小事,母親從不會(huì)認(rèn)為它們是不重要的。母親不會(huì)嘲笑你的夢(mèng)想。好母親會(huì)關(guān)注她的孩子。偉大的母親會(huì)為你準(zhǔn)備一些溫馨的食物,并給予你關(guān)注。

I’m not sure what was happening at the time but I know those little chicken pot pies were not worthy of a sprint across town. With the clarity of vision that the years bring, I now know that I needed a friendly place of warm acceptance for a few minutes a day. I didn’t need my stomach filled as much as I needed my emotional fuel tank refilled. And refueling an emotional fuel tank is a good mother’s specialty.

我不確定當(dāng)時(shí)是怎么回事,但我知道,那些小小的雞肉餡餅并不值得我穿城飛跑回家。歲月使我看得愈加清晰,我現(xiàn)在知道了,我當(dāng)時(shí)需要一個(gè)溫暖的空間——一天之中能給我?guī)追昼姷臏嘏J(rèn)可。相比填飽肚子,我更需要給我的“精神油箱”加油。而給“精神油箱”加油是一個(gè)好母親的專長(zhǎng)所在。