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Every weekend for as long as I can remember, my father would get up on a Saturday,

在我能够记住的每个周末，我的父亲在周六起床后，

put on a worn sweatshirt and he'd scrape away at the squeaky old wheel of a house that we lived in.

会穿上一件旧T恤衫，他会刮掉我们所住的老房子的油漆。

I wouldn't even call it restoration; it was a ritual, catharsis.

我不能把它叫做修整，那是一种仪式，一种净化。

He would spend all year scraping paint with this old heat gun and a spackle knife,

他会用整整一年的时间来用他的热风枪以及抹墙粉刀来刮掉油漆，

and then he would repaint where he scraped, only to begin again the following year.

然后他会重新油漆他刮掉的部分，这只是为了能在来年重新开始。

Scraping and re-scraping, painting and repainting: the work of an old house is never meant to be done.

刮漆和再次刮漆，油漆和再次油漆，这所老房子的工作永远不会结束。

The day my father turned 52, I got a phone call.

当我父亲52岁的时候，我接到一通电话，

My mother was on the line to tell me that doctors had found a lump in his stomach

我母亲在线上告诉我说医生在他的腹腔发现一个肿块儿，

terminal cancer, she told me, and he had been given only three weeks to live.

癌症晚期，她这么跟我说，他只能活三周。

I immediately moved home to Poughkeepsie, New York,

我立即搬家到纽约Poughkeepsie，

to sit with my father on death watch, not knowing what the next days would bring us.

为我父亲临终看护，不知道第二天我们会发生些什么。

To keep myself distracted, I rolled up my sleeves,

为了让自己分散注意力，我卷起了袖子，

and I went about finishing what he could now no longer complete -- the restoration of our old home.

我去做他再也无法完成的事情--修整我们的老房子。

When that looming¹ three-week deadline came and then went, he was still alive.

当那个无形的三周期限来到了又过去后，他还是活着。

And at three months, he joined me. We gutted² and repainted the interior.

三个月后，他开始跟我一起，我们重新粉刷了内部。

At six months, the old windows were refinished, and at 18 months, the rotted porch was finally replaced.

六个月后，老窗户完成了，18个月的时候，破败的阳台也翻新了。