情人眼里出西施，妈妈眼里出诗人

小女儿写在纸上的一首小诗让我欣喜不已：看来，尽管我们的相貌、性格和爱好是如此不同，但我们都热爱写作。可惜，这只是我一厢情愿的误会……

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: 灵感。

2. back and forth: 来回地;forage for: 四处搜寻。

3. 她只抬过一次头，冲我调皮地咧嘴一笑，确认我同意她这么做，同时也是有意吸引我的注意。

4. take after:(在外貌、行为等方面)与(某个长辈)相像。

5. temperament: 性格，性情。

6. inversion: 反向，上下颠倒。

7. 她喜欢水果甜品，而不是巧克力;喜欢没完没了地玩桌上游戏，而不是去看戏剧;喜欢事实，而不是想象。

8. bound: 跳跃，跳跃着前进;oversized: 特大号的;atlas:(世界)地图集，地图册。

9. mismatch: 不匹配，不协调。

10. graphic: 绘画的，印刷的。

11. bridge: 弥合(差距)，消除(分歧);divide: 差异，差别;nurture: 培养。

12. parallel: 平行的。

13. metaphor: 比喻。

14. 她会把口袋装满石子，脚上穿着紫色凉鞋，站在地上一动不动(牢牢盯住地面?)，而我则站在几步以外，看着鸟儿在头顶飞过。

15. elementary school: 小学。

16. interrupt: 打断;“me” time: 个人独处的时间;companionship: 陪伴。

17. pad: 便签本，下文的notepad同义。

18. literate: 清晰流畅的，洗练的。

19. dazed:(尤因震惊、意外事故等而)茫然的，恍惚的。

20. revelation:〈口〉出乎意料的好事。

21. acknowledge: 承认(优秀或重要)。

22. 我很快变得紧张起来。

23. gulp: 一大口，吞咽;tepid:(液体)微温的，微热的(尤指温度不合适的)。

24. backhand: 用手背打。

25. ricochet: 跳飞，弹回;clutch: 紧紧抓住;verse: 诗句;anew: 重新。

26. punctuation: 标点符号。

27. stubbornly: 固执地;cling to: 坚持。

28. eat crow:〈口〉被迫承认错误，(被迫)收回已说的话。