第230期：那些年，父亲教我的那些事

想成为我们的主播，欢迎加微信 xdfbook 投稿。 一段美文，一首英文歌，或是一点生活感想，全由你做主。 《那些年，父亲教我的那些事》 My Father Won’t Read This, And That’s OK with Me For the past few years, I’ve had a tumultuous1) relationship with Facebook. A few days ago, I was reminded why. I was at a campus fitness center, on a spinning bike, pedaling my way through a 45-minute routine. Despite the general flailing2) quality of my workout, I sweated, got breathless, and achieved a mental state of honed motivation. Maybe it was the inspirational poster taped to the otherwise-blank wall my bike faced: A man’s long, brown forearm palms a ruddy basketball. Superimposed over the image are the words “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” We have Vince Lombardi3) to thank for this kick-in-the-pants4) of a sentence—and as I slowed my pedaling, I felt like I’d already won. So it wasn’t QUITTING when I looked at my phone and checked Facebook—that’s what I told myself. What was quitting was me abandoning the bike as I started to read the post of an acquaintance, a woman who had that day lost her dad. “I didn’t expect to have such a short time with him,” the woman admitted. News like this always wrecks me, but this woman’s loss hit me more personally: Her father and mine share the same first name. I’d rather not mention that name. After all, one of the reasons I’ve long been freaked out about Facebook is because I was raised—by my parents, but especially by my dad—to be a private person. How does THAT work for a writer? Not super well. And yet, surely Vince Lombardi has applicable wisdom: “The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.” I’ve been fortunate enough to develop the confidence to believe that what I have is my mind and my voice, and for that I need to thank my dad. He’s alive and well, I should add, but hey—there’s a fair chance he might not read this. I’m pretty sure a part of him still wishes I’d done something involving math. I have a solid suspicion that he only finds my writing when my mom shows it to him—and that’s okay. When I was a kid, I saw other dads. They were everywhere, wearing Hawaiian shirts and mustaches, carrying wallets and drinking beers. On television, they gave stumbling advice or flaunted5) their comic ineptitude at the flames of the charcoal grill. Sitcom dads got teased by wives and taunted6) by children until the moment of crisis, and fatherly advice was proffered like Bactine7) for a skinned knee. It hurts but it’s good. The dads I met in real life wore shirts and mustaches, too, but they also wore red vests and headdresses8). My dad was one of them. For ten years, he and I participated in a program called Indian Princesses. We went on campouts where we practiced archery, paddled aluminum canoes, and climbed rock towers with names like Mount Wood. We had nicknames, too, like “Singing Bird” and “Screaming Eagle.” That was me and my dad, the quietest members of the “Arapaho9) tribe.” To tell you the truth, I envied the other girls with their jouncy10) dads. The other Arapaho dads were outgoing and funny. I envied girls with braggy dads who boasted of their daughter’s accuracy at the rifle range; girls with lenient11) dads, who let their daughters fork tunnels through mess hall mashed potatoes. I’m not sure when the envying wore off, but one year it did, like a puddle12) on hot asphalt13), gone in an instant. Instead of wanting a dad who treated me like a princess, I became grateful for the way my father held me to a higher standard. That’s what it felt like, anyhow, when it was just the two of us in a canoe, paddling down the Rock River. Rowing is hard, and it’s especially hard when you’re a twelve-year-old girl who can’t even do a push-up. Other canoes ferried groups of four: two dads and two daughters so the Princesses wouldn’t have to do the grunt work. In our vessel, it was just Screaming Eagle and me. My friends waved as they passed us by. I could hear them singing. My hands were already blistering14); they smarted15) when I repositioned them on the oars. But even though we were perpetually getting lodged16) in rocks, the prow17) of our canoe smacking18) into sand and silt19), even though our journey down the river took twice the time of the other Arapahos and sometimes we heard nothing but the sound of our paddles slapping the water, an invisible fish leaping, my dad and I were steering that boat together, fueled by the cans of Diet Soda he’d stashed20) in the pockets of his windbreaker. Winners never quit and quitters never win: My dad taught me there are so many ways to win every day. Winning is a personal matrix, the little choices that add up to character. Of course winning is reaching the top of Mount Wood before anyone else, but winning is also dealing with wet dock shoes when your daughter can’t get the hang of21) placing just the blade—and not the oar’s shaft—in the water. Winning is being together in the canoe. Winning, my father taught me, is using one plate instead of two, is drinking the morning’s cold coffee instead of buying a Starbucks in the middle of the afternoon. Winning isn’t not procrastinating22)—winning is staying up all night when you have a project or a report due the next day, when you have a deadline, when you have the stamina22) to think a little harder. Winning, my dad taught me, is thinking, thinking not only in an intellectual context, but thinking about the person you want to be in this world. There are all kinds of facts I could tell you about my father, but none of those would begin to explain why I feel closest to him in my family. He may know the least about me: I would be ashamed, for instance, if he knew how much money I’d spent on clothes, purses, even books—after all, I learned as a teenager, CDs were a waste. “What are you going to do with those?” my dad would ask me when I filled an under-the-bed plastic storage container with music. I was incredulous then—and incredulous again, last year, when I returned to my parent’s house and dumped all those CDs at Goodwill23). He doesn’t know my darkest secrets and, on the surface, we have so little in common. He likes ribs; I like tuna tartare. He likes “cocoa mocho frappuccinos”; I like espresso and water. He likes his half-acre of lawn; I like city blocks. And yet when we talk on the phone, we can spend an hour comparing our dogs, our weather, and our jobs, and I marvel that two people can feel so close. What, then, is that space between the river’s bottom and the froth the canoe leaves in its wake on the surface? If neither our secrets nor our affinities bind me and my father, what does? Somehow, that mysterious something seems bigger, and though I’m not a math person like my dad, I’m certain the middle darkness of a river encompasses its greatest area. Father’s Day is coming and I can’t not think about how lucky I am to have the Dad I do. I want to honor our relationship—as quiet and indefinable as it might be—while he’s around to hear it. Yes, I’m thankful for his wisdom and quirks, grateful for everything he’s taught me about the world. But I’m also glad for everything he hasn’t taught me. He hasn’t taught me to be dependent on men; he hasn’t taught me to see myself as an enemy or a princess—in fact, by seeing me as a person with a mind and a heart rather than as a woman, he’s taught me to look past some of the most biological parts of myself. He’s the sort of understated person who can’t be summed up in a Lombardi-ism. He’s not a coach or a champ, a jock24) or geek. He’s the quiet, goofy, introspective, dog-loving man who taught me to guard myself and my privacy, to honor my thoughts—and the man who grants me the courage to give all that away. 过去几年中，我和脸书的关系时好时坏。几天前，我意识到了其中的原因。 我当时在一个校园健身中心里，骑在一辆动感单车上，正在进行一项时长45分钟的例行训练。虽然我骑车骑得手忙脚乱，却还是满身大汗，气喘吁吁，达到了一种斗志勃发的精神状态。或许这要多谢我对面的墙上不是空白一片，而是贴了张励志海报：一位男性用长长的棕色小臂揽着一只红棕色的篮球。图上写着“成功者从不半途而废，半途而废的人永远不会成功。” 这种当头棒喝型的警句要归功于文斯·隆巴迪。而当我逐渐放慢蹬车速度，我感觉自己已经算是成功了。所以当我掏出手机看脸书时，并不算是半途而废——我这么安慰自己。真正的半途而废要从我停下单车训练，开始阅读一位女性朋友的帖子开始。发帖那天，她的父亲离世了。 “没想到我和他共处的时间会这么短。”她承认道。这种事情总是让我觉得很难过，但是这位女性朋友痛失亲人的经历尤其让我感同身受：她的父亲和我的父亲同名。我在此就不提这个名字了。毕竟，长久以来，脸书让我觉得不安的原因之一就是，我从小就被教育——被我的父母，尤其是我的父亲教育——要成为一个珍视隐私的人。 一个作家能够做到这一点吗？没办法做得特别好。但是，文斯·隆巴迪自然也有应景的名言：“衡量我们是什么样的人，要看我们利用自己所拥有的东西都做了什么。”我很幸运地建立起自信心，自认我所拥有的是我的头脑和我的声音，而这份自信的获得要归功于我的父亲。 必须要加一句，我的父亲尚在人世，身体安康，但是，很有可能，他不会读到本篇文章。我很确信他还是有些希望我能在数学方面有所作为。我强烈怀疑只有当我母亲把我的文章拿给他看时，他才会发现我的写作——但我并不介意。 在我小时候，我观察过别人的父亲。他们随处可见，身着夏威夷花衬衫，留着八字胡，带着皮夹，喝着啤酒。在电视上，他们拙嘴笨舌地提出建议，或者在碳烤架的火焰旁洋洋得意地展示他们令人忍俊不禁的笨拙姿态。情景喜剧里的爸爸们平日里被妻子揶揄，被子女嘲笑，但一到危机时刻，却总能提出慈父的建议，就像为擦破皮的膝盖喷急救喷雾一样。疼是疼，但效果立竿见影。 我在真实生活中遇见的父亲们也有穿衬衫、留八字胡的时候，但是他们也有穿红色马甲、戴印第安头饰的时候。我父亲就是其中一员。在长达十年的时间里，他和我参加了一个叫“印第安公主”的项目。我们外出露营，在那里练习射箭，划铝制独木舟，爬名为“木头峰”的岩石山。我们还有外号呢，比如“鸣鸟”和“啸鹰”，分别指我和我父亲——整个“阿拉帕霍部落”里最安静的两个成员。 ………… 文章摘自：《新东方英语》杂志2017年6月号