小女兒寫在紙上的一首小詩讓我欣喜不已：看來，盡管我們的相貌、性格和愛好是如此不同，但我們都熱愛寫作。可惜，這只是我一廂情愿的誤會……

By Chrissy Boylan

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My 6-year-old daughter, Nina, wrote a poem the other day that I won’t soon forget.

Her inspiration[1] struck during one of our “lazy” Saturday mornings. In our family, “lazy” is code for watch as much TV as you like, just stay out of the kitchen so I can drink coffee and read the newspaper. Nina’s two sisters have no problem cooperating. Nina, however, persistently travels back and forth to the kitchen to forage for yellow apples and salty nuts.[2]

On this particular Saturday, Nina also came in hunting for pen and paper. Finding both items on the kitchen table in front of me, she bent over and began writing. She looked up only once, casting me an impish grin to confirm that yes, in fact, she did mean for me to notice her.[3] Meanwhile, I wondered what she could be writing.

Nina has always been a mystery to me.

For one thing, she doesn’t take after[4] me at all. Looks? No. Personality? Temperament[5]? A perfect inversion[6] of my own. She chooses fruit desserts over chocolate, repetitive board games to dramatic play, and fact over fiction.[7]

Bounding out of school one day, she waved an oversized atlas at me.[8] “Look, Mom!” she exclaimed. “A book full of maps, and only maps!” Until that night, I had never read an atlas in my life. Even our likes are mismatched[9]. She likes snakes, owls, and cats. I like dead snakes, owls only as graphic[10] art, and cats not even in theory.

I’ve tried to bridge the divide over the years, nurturing interests we could pursue together, or at least at the same time.[11] They have a name for this at her preschool: parallel[12] play. It’s what kids do when they want to be around a friend but not necessarily play with that friend. It’s a good metaphor[13] for Nina and me. When she was younger, we could share long afternoon walks this way. She would fill her pockets with rocks, rooting herself to the earth in purple-sandaled feet while I, inches away, watched birds skitter above.[14]

Soon enough, however, she went off to elementary school[15], leaving our afternoon walks and me behind. So when Nina interrupted my “me” time in the kitchen that lazy Saturday morning, I welcomed her quiet companionship.[16]

Nina stood over the kitchen table that morning for several minutes, moving pen over paper. Then, as quickly as she had begun, she finished. She pushed the pad[17] of paper back in my direction, and skipped out of the kitchen.

I pulled the notepad toward me, and read the note. I read it again. And then again, and again, so there could be no mistake. Nina had written a poem. A beautifully literate[18] poem. About me!

Mom is a

Golden Delicious

the softest apple

in the world

I sat dazed[19] for several minutes, holding the notepad in midair.

Nina loved me.

No matter how different we were, Nina loved me and had found her poetic voice in telling me so. That led to an another revelation[20]: She could write! Nina and I were both writers!

But first, I had work to do. Surely her poetic talent had to be acknowledged[21], encouraged. Tension quickly set in.[22] After several desperate gulps of increasingly tepid coffee, I settled on the following:[23]

Nina is

Nina

the sweetest name

in the whole world.

Calling her back into the kitchen, I pushed the notepad toward her and smiled shyly.

“What is this, Mom?” She asked.

“What’s what, honey?”

“Uh, this?” she said, backhanding[24] the notepad at me. “Where’s the answer?”

Thoughts ricocheted inside my head as I clutched the paper back and studied the verse anew.[25] Eventually I found it. Or rather didn’t find it. The missing punctuation[26], that is.

Mentally adding a comma after “Mom,” and a question mark to the end, I paused. Despite the hard reality of the situation staring me in the face, I stubbornly clung to the idea of her words as a poem.[27] She may have been describing an apple, but I would always find a certain poetry in her verse.

Eating crow,[28] I tried to answer her question as lovingly as I could. “I don’t know, Nina. I hadn’t thought of it that way before. Do you think Golden Delicious are the softest apples in the world?”

Vocabulary

1. inspiration: 靈感。

2. back and forth: 來回地；forage for: 四處搜尋。

3. 她只抬過一次頭，沖我調皮地咧嘴一笑，確認我同意她這么做，同時也是有意吸引我的注意。

4. take after:（在外貌、行為等方面）與（某個長輩）相像。

5. temperament: 性格，性情。

6. inversion: 反向，上下顛倒。

7. 她喜歡水果甜品，而不是巧克力；喜歡沒完沒了地玩桌上游戲，而不是去看戲劇；喜歡事實，而不是想象。

8. bound: 跳躍，跳躍著前進；oversized: 特大號的；atlas:（世界）地圖集，地圖冊。

9. mismatch: 不匹配，不協調。

10. graphic: 繪畫的，印刷的。

11. bridge: 彌合（差距），消除（分歧）；divide: 差異，差別；nurture: 培養。

12. parallel: 平行的。

13. metaphor: 比喻。

14. 她會把口袋裝滿石子，腳上穿著紫色涼鞋，站在地上一動不動（牢牢盯住地面？），而我則站在幾步以外，看著鳥兒在頭頂飛過。

15. elementary school: 小學。

16. interrupt: 打斷；“me” time: 個人獨處的時間；companionship: 陪伴。

17. pad: 便簽本，下文的notepad同義。

18. literate: 清晰流暢的，洗練的。

19. dazed:（尤因震驚、意外事故等而）茫然的，恍惚的。

20. revelation:〈口〉出乎意料的好事。

21. acknowledge: 承認（優秀或重要）。

22. 我很快變得緊張起來。

23. gulp: 一大口，吞咽；tepid:（液體）微溫的，微熱的（尤指溫度不合適的）。

24. backhand: 用手背打。

25. ricochet: 跳飛，彈回；clutch: 緊緊抓住；verse: 詩句；anew: 重新。

26. punctuation: 標點符號。

27. stubbornly: 固執地；cling to: 堅持。

28. eat crow:〈口〉被迫承認錯誤，（被迫）收回已說的話。

（來源：英語學習雜志）