TED演讲:新美国梦(4)

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He had, as unbelievable as it might sound, 21 children, with one woman, my great-grandmother, who died at 47 years old of ovarian cancer. 他和我的曾祖母有21个孩子，听起来难以置信，我的曾祖母因为卵巢癌，于47岁去世。

Now, I'm pregnant with my second child, and I cannot even fathom¹ what she must have gone through. 现在，我怀着第二个孩子，我甚至不敢想象她经历了什么。

And if you're trying to do the math -- there were six sets of twins. 如果你们算一下的话，其中有6对双胞胎。

So my grandfather, their son, became a traveling salesman, and he lived boom and bust². 我的祖父，也就是他们的儿子，当了一名旅行推销员，生活起伏不定。

So my dad grew up answering the door for debt collectors and pretending his parents weren't home. 因此我父亲的童年一直就是，给催债的人开门，假装说父母不在家。

He actually took his braces³ off himself with pliers in the garage, 我祖父说没有钱去看正牙医。

when his father admitted he didn't have money to go back to the orthodontist. 我父亲就自己在车库里用钳子把牙套拔掉。

So my dad, unsurprisingly, became a bankruptcy⁴ lawyer. Couldn't write this in a novel, right? 因此不足为奇，我父亲成了一位破产清算律师。这可不能写在小说里，对吧？

He was obsessed⁵ with providing a secure foundation for my brother and I. 他一心想为我们姐弟俩提供稳定的生活。

So I ask these questions by way of a few generations of struggle. 因此我通过描述几代人的奋斗，回答了刚才的问题

My parents made sure that I grew up on a kind of steady ground that allows one to question and risk and leap. 父母想确保我的成长建立在稳固的基础上，在这种基础上就会产生质疑、风险、冒险。

And ironically, and probably sometimes to their frustration⁶, 具有讽刺意味的是，可能对此我的父母也很失望，

it is their steadfast⁷ commitment to security that allows me to question its value, 正是因为他们想要为我提供稳定生活的决心，我才开始质疑其价值

or at least its value as we've historically defined it in the 21st century. 或是说，21世纪对其价值的定义。

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