如果我的人生是一出电影,我会快进初中求学那部分内容。我的初中时光充满了痛苦。像每个初中生一样,我得面对情窦爱欲的萌芽,为认识自我建立自我而挣扎,苦恼该如何给自己的人生烙下印记。但那时,我确信自己得单独面对这些奇怪的感受。

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.

我尝试过做一些事情,但都失败了。我希望自己成为运动健将,但当时没意识到那是绝不会发生的。我学业成绩不好,连“academic”这个词都拼不出来(此刻,没有那棒极了的微软文档“拼写检查”小功能的帮助,我也能拼出“academic”那个词,我都感到有些吃惊)。作为学校里的一名新生,我很想跻身于校园里的社交圈子。我一直记得自己当时遭到了大多数同龄人的排斥,被踢出篮球队,渴望踢足球却踢不成。那时候,我会揣测女孩们眼中的自己是怎样的,多么希望有人爱自己,有人接受自己。但那时,被爱和被接受于我而言似乎是某种我这一生都不会得到的东西。

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.

那段时光里,我会穿过在学生餐厅里排队的人群,独自用餐,感觉自己被忽视且不被喜欢。冬去春来,有一天,我准备出门,抱怨着没人和我一起吃饭。母亲对我说:“你喜欢的话,可以回家吃午饭呀。”那天,午餐时间到了,那正是俄亥俄州中部山区一个美丽的春日。中午,铃声响起,我从学校跑出来,跑过那个小村庄回家吃饭。不知道母亲是否还记得当时的情景。当我回到家,母亲正从烤炉里拿出一小块鸡肉馅饼给我。那是一顿简便的午餐,就是一块那种一美元就能买到四块的鸡肉馅饼,里面有些许鸡肉粒,冰冻豌豆和胡萝卜,浇上些鸡肉汁。

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.

餐桌就放置在窗台下,母亲在餐桌边我的碟子一旁放了块餐巾。在我们那间位于尤蒂卡枫叶街租来的白色小房子里,我坐在厨房里那张简陋的餐桌旁。母亲听我说着心头的大事小事。大约过了15分钟,我的午休时间结束了,我跑回学校。

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.

那大约是在1972年,30年前发生的事了。我母亲当时才三十出头。她那时在我看来已经很老了。而现在,三十多岁的人对我来说就像小孩。餐桌上的15分钟里,她都坐在我对面,看着我,听我讲话。30年后,我还会满心欢喜地忆起那些时光。她关注的就是我。给予他人以关注是一件伟大的事。

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.

现在,你又知道了多一些我对家的看法了。家,是一个你不需要独自坐着吃饭的地方。家,是一个你不会被忽略或避开的地方。

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,是一个吃什么其实不那么重要的地方。在一种充满爱、安全感和被认可的氛围中,简单的东西品尝起来也会显得香甜可口。当别人都对你的事不感兴趣时,母亲是那个会倾听你心声的人。而且,对于你做的那些无聊小事,母亲从不会认为它们是不重要的。母亲不会嘲笑你的梦想。好母亲会关注她的孩子。伟大的母亲会为你准备一些温馨的食物,并给予你关注。

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.

我不确定当时是怎么回事,但我知道,那些小小的鸡肉馅饼并不值得我穿城飞跑回家。岁月使我看得愈加清晰,我现在知道了,我当时需要一个温暖的空间——一天之中能给我几分钟的温暖认可。相比填饱肚子,我更需要给我的“精神油箱”加油。而给“精神油箱”加油是一个好母亲的专长所在。