我的父亲让我觉得他是一个奇迹

父亲是个奇迹，他仿佛无所不能。他可以从偏僻的乡间忽然变出一个街头商店，他准确地知道我们的行驶里程，他可以让正在狂奔的马车乖乖停下。父亲也让我创造自己的奇迹：他允许我拿野生的猫做宠物，让我选择自己的生活……

My dad was magic. He could make a corner store appear out of nowhere. This was the best part of going on calls with him: getting a bag of chips and an old-style curvy bottle of Coke, which you had to open using the bottle opener that was part of the cooler.

That was summer for me. The smell of dust and manure , hot on a summer breeze, pushed fast through the windows as we drove down winding roads. Even now, and I know how awful it sounds, the smell of manure makes me think of my dad. For years I have enjoyed that smell, and inhaled it deeply, surreptitiously, whenever I encountered it. It transports me back to those summer days: days with my dad.

This was how I, and both my brothers, got to know our father – against the backdrop of the farms around Elmira in Southwestern Ontario that he served as a large animal veterinarian for more than 40 years. He travelled across the region from farm to farm every day, helping and healing, collecting friends and experiences from every person he met.

But summers were the best: no school, and wide-open countryside, bombing along winding gravel roads, arm kinked out the car window in imitation.

We would talk about pretty much anything on those drives: Dad seemed to know everything about everything. And he liked to listen to us. Sometimes we could just be quiet, and watch the miles roll along beneath us.

He could tell you how long a mile was. But what I did not know was that he was checking the odometer the whole time. Those magical corner stores? He just knew the countryside so well that he knew exactly when to ask if I wanted a snack, to make it seem like a store just dropped out of the sky onto the side of a country road, merely because he wanted it so. I only figured it out a few years ago, because something inside me did not want to lose that magical quality.

But Dad could make magic happen.

When I was about 6, he took me out on a calving call. It was a snowy night. We parked the car at the side of the road, but the barn was nowhere to be seen. Standing there, in blissful confusion, I was unconcerned because my father was there with me and I knew nothing bad would happen.

Out of the darkness a jingling sound emerged, getting louder and seeming to come from every direction.

I was young enough to hope that it could be Santa with his reindeer sleigh (for Christmas was on the horizon), and I waited hopefully. A light bobbed along across the field, and I watched with open-mouthed wonder as a horse-drawn sleigh drew up beside us. “The drive is too full of snow,” my dad explained, “so they came to pick us up in the sleigh.”

I don’t know whether that was true or not. To be honest, I don’t really care if it was. The truth of that night was a horse-drawn sleigh ride through the snowy dark of night, huddled up under a rough woollen blanket that smelled of horses, and cuddling my dad’s arm. I don’t remember much else of that night, but that journey stayed with me for a lifetime.

In time, my dad let me be magic.

While he treated the animals and chatted with the clients, who had become his friends, I was allowed the run of the barn. And run I did: chasing semi-feral barn cats everywhere, trying to catch just one so that I could pet it and hear it purr. I would return to where my dad was working, carrying my feline trophy with pride. Inevitably, the farmer would glance over, do a double-take and say: “That cat’s near on wild. No one has been able to pet that one in forever.” I would beam and snuggle it a little tighter, then let it go.

Even after I became an adult, my dad was magic.

He and my mother were very progressive in their way of raising me, encouraging me to get an education and career, and then think about a husband and family. But they let me choose my own way to get there, and didn’t say a whole lot when I chose a different order of accomplishing those things.

My dad got my mother onto a plane for the first time to fly over the Atlantic so that she could be there for my wedding in Britain and to meet her grandson for the first time.

He helped me purchase my first home. He showed my son a taste of my childhood and the dusty summer days on country roads, taking him to meet and visit dozens of relatives and friends.

This past year, he trusted me and my skill with words to help him record his memoirs.

And now that his days are over, I wish I had thanked him more. For being my father. For giving me so many memories. For being magic.

Vocabulary

1. corner store: 街头小店。

2. curvy: 弯曲的，曲线美的;cooler: 冷却器，冷藏箱。

3. manure: 粪便。

4. inhale: 吸入;surreptitiously: 偷偷摸摸地，暗中进行地;encounter: 遇到。

5. 我和我的兄弟们就是那样去了解我们的父亲的——在安大略省西南部一个叫艾尔迈拉镇的嘈杂农场上，他做了40多年的大型动物兽医。backdrop: 背景;Elmira: 艾尔迈拉镇;Ontario: (加拿大的)安大略省;veterinarian: 兽医。

6. 夏天是最好的季节：不用上学，在宽广的乡间，开着车在蜿蜒的碎石路上疾驰，还要模仿别人将胳膊伸到车窗外面去。bomb: 疾行，飞驶;winding: 蜿蜒的，弯曲的;gravel: 砂砾，碎石;kink: (使)弯曲，(使)扭结。

7. odometer: 里程表。

8. 大约在我六岁的时候，有一次他带着我去接生小牛。calve: 生小牛。

9. blissful: 极幸福的，充满快乐的。

10. bob: v. 上下或来回快速摆动;draw up: 停下。

11. huddle up: 缩成一团;cuddle: 抱，拥抱。

12. semi-feral: 还未训好的，半野生的;purr: (猫等)发呼噜声。

13. feline: 猫科的;trophy: 战利品。

14. double-take: 愣了一会儿才恍然大悟。

15. beam: 笑容满面，眉开眼笑;snuggle: 紧抱。