English 版 (精华区)
发信人: dandy (我在桥上看风景), 信区: English
标 题: "You Are My Dictionary"
发信站: 紫 丁 香 (Mon Nov 8 17:20:48 1999), 转信
"You Are My Dictionary" 你是我的字典
Part 1
By Ruth Sidransky
作者的父母都是聋哑人,所以这样的家庭会遇到与众不同的矛盾、痛苦,但
是这样一个家庭却依然洋溢着温情和温馨。
WHEN MY FATHER came home here was laughter, rollicking, rolling laughter.
He was strong and handsome; his thick, black, wavy hair fell into his
black, laughing eyes. When he kissed me, I pushed his bristled(刺人的)
mustache from my tender skin. His hands, thick and *squared off(指尖长得
有棱有角) at the tips, smelled of the sweet horsehair at the upholstery
(室内装潢品) factory. His fingernails carried the *cotton lint(棉绒) he
used to stuff satins sofas.
He signed his name, Benjamin, but no one called him that, I called him
Daddy Ben. People who could hear called him Benny.
My father, like my mother, was deaf, So I grew up living in two worlds,
our private world and the 'hearing" world outside. I was on intimate
terms with silence and the language of silence.
My mother was born deaf, and so, I thought, was my father. Then one day
he mentioned that he had not always been deaf.
"You weren't? How did you become deaf?" my hands asked.
"I was sick, a long time. Ask Grandma," he replied.
When Grandma Lizzie came to our apartment, I rushed to her, demanding an
answer. She said, "*Spinal meningitis(脊膜炎)" and told how my father had
been stricken with the disease when he was two. As he approached -school
age, his hearing diminished until there was none, not even the memory of
sound.
He was a bright child, but his intelligence was locked away. Without
normal speech at the age when children begin to play with Syllables(音节)
and sounds, my father was separated from his own wit. His other senses did
become more acute@ with time. But he never recovered from early verbal
neglect, He could not read a book page by page. The folowing language,
line after line, chapater after chapter, was too difficult to sustain.
At times the written word confounded him more than the lips he strained
to read.
Even so, Daddy Ben was undefeated. He transformed pain into humor. "It
is better to laugh at life," he'd say. "It makes easier a hard time. "
--------------------------to be continued-------------------------
--
昔我往矣,杨柳依依,今我来思,雨雪霏霏。
行道迟迟,载渴载饥, 我心伤悲,哀人莫知。
※ 来源:.紫 丁 香 bbs.hit.edu.cn.[FROM: 202.118.237.98]
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