A basket of berries, with love 一篮草莓——无言之爱

I never thought a misunderstanding over wild red raspberries would send my mother-in-law out to the hills at dusk, just to pick an entire basket for me. 我从未想过，因为野生草莓引起的小误会，让我的婆婆在黄昏时分还要到山上，只为给我采回一篮。 It happened in May many years ago, during a summer I lived with my in-laws in their rural Zhejiang village. My mother-in-law had just called us all downstairs for dinner and, as usual, the table was already covered with a steaming selection of delicacies. 这件事发生在很多年前，正值五月，那个夏天我和公婆们一起住在浙江乡下。婆婆招呼所有人下楼吃晚餐，一如往常，桌上摆满了热气腾腾的美味佳肴。 But while sitting down to my spot at the table, I thought I had heard somebody say miaozi, the term for raspberries in the local dialect. The very possibility of dining on this jewel of a fruit, my favorite in May, was too tantalizing for me not to ask if there were some in the house. 我坐在桌旁，好像听到有人说“妙子”，用当地方言说就是草莓的意思。这是我在5月份最喜欢吃的水果，想到晚饭很有可能吃上这晶莹剔透的水果，对我来说太诱惑了，便不禁问了一句家里有没有。 Turns out, I was wrong. 事实证明，我不该问的。 But that didn’t stop my Chinese in-laws from interpreting my question as a veiled request. So there was my father-in-law, urging my mother-in-law to venture into the hills and gather wild red raspberries, never mind the gorgeous spread of food we already had on the table. 公公婆婆是中国人，他们把这当成了一种含蓄的要求。于是，公公就催婆婆上山，去采些野生的草莓，似乎都忘了已经摆在桌上的美味佳肴。 Of course, I was embarrassed by this suggestion and wouldn’t think of sending her out to pick fruit, as we were all ready to eat and the sunlight was fading. I begged her to sit down and enjoy dinner with us, telling her I didn’t need the raspberries. It was too much trouble and too late. 这个建议让我很尴尬，我不想让婆婆去，我们都要吃晚饭了，而且太阳也快落山了。我和婆婆说不想吃草莓了，一直劝她和大家一起吃饭。去采草莓太麻烦了，而且天也晚了。 So I believed that, when she disappeared into the kitchen with her placid smile, so had this crazy idea of gathering raspberries at sundown. But as the minutes passed by without my mother-in-law’s return, I began to wonder. 她笑着进了厨房，所以我就觉得她不会在日落时分还出去采草莓。但是，过了很长时间她都没回来，这让我不免开始怀疑。 Sure enough, just as I prepared to leave the table, she appeared in the dining room, bearing a basket of the very fruit I explicitly implored her not to harvest. The fern leaf she had artfully arranged on top only added to the sense of guilt washing over me, knowing how she had delayed her own meal to do this. 果然，就在我准备离开餐桌时，她回到了餐厅，提着一篮子水果，正是我劝她不要去采的草莓。看到她用心地把叶子盖在上面，我非常内疚，她自己连饭都没，却跑到山上为我摘草莓。 And as much as I shook my head at that basket of raspberries, I also recognized it for what it really was -- another way to show how much she loved me. 我对着装满草莓的篮子摇摇头，有些惊讶，却也明白了其中的真意 ——这就是她向我表达爱的方式。 My Chinese in-laws have never told me “I love you,”  three words that have been a constant part of my family life in America since I was a child, nor have they ever hugged or kissed me like my parents do. But I’ve felt that same care and regard in unspoken ways. Like how my mother-in-law would secretly wash all of my clothes by hand, despite my pleas otherwise. Or how my father-in-law forced a thick stack of money into my hands -- one I tried hard to refuse -- when I left their home to visit Shanghai. 公公婆婆从未对我说过“我爱你”，但在美国，从小到大，我的家人经常会说这三个字，这几乎成了我们生活的一部分。公公婆婆也不会像我父母那样拥抱我、亲吻我。 但我能感觉到他们在以一种无言的方式表达着同样的关怀和关注。比如婆婆会默默地亲手洗干净我的衣服，尽管我劝她不用洗的。又比如，我离开他们去上海时，公公会把一大叠钱塞给我 ，尽管我努力地拒绝。 While all this has meant learning a different language of love, I’ve come to appreciate just how far Chinese families will go to show their affection -- even into a hillside at sunset looking for raspberries. 虽然这一切都意味着要去学习一种不同的爱的表达，但我已经开始领悟到中国家庭表达感情的方式会达到怎样的程度，那便是即使日落时分，也要去山上采回的草莓。