全文翻译自纽约时报11月22日文章
原题：It’s Thanksgiving. Come On Home.
作者：
Margaret Renkl
译者：
冬天毛
纽约时报（
The New York Times
）是一家日报，于1851年创办，是美国严肃报刊的代表。由于风格古典严肃，它有时也被戏称为“灰色女士”（The Gray Lady）。
（维基百科）
正文：
NASHVILLE — I thought I had escaped the beautiful, benighted South for good when I left Alabama for graduate school in Philadelphia in 1984, though now I can’t imagine how that delusion ever took root. At the age of 22, I had never set foot any farther north than Chattanooga, Tenn. I was so poorly traveled — and so geographically illiterate — I could not pick out the state of Pennsylvania on an unlabeled weather map on the evening news.
纳什维尔——1984年，我离开了阿拉巴马州，前往费城读研。那时，我以为我已经永远地逃离了风景秀丽、闭塞蒙昧的南国；而今，我简直难以想象当初的这种错觉是从何而来。我时年22岁，到过的最北边也不过就是田纳西州的查塔努加。我游历短浅，地理知识如同文盲；要是把晚间新闻的天气地图放在我面前，我连宾州的位置都找不到。
When I tell people, if it ever comes up, that I once spent a semester in Philadelphia, a knot instantly forms in the back of my throat, an echo of the panic and despair I felt with every step I took on those unfamiliar sidewalks, with every breath of that heavy, exhaust-burdened air. In August I moved into a walk-up on a main artery of West Philly, and I lay awake that first sweltering night with the windows open to catch what passed for a breeze, waiting for the unfamiliar sounds of traffic to die down. They never did. All night long, the gears of delivery trucks ground at the traffic light on the corner; four floors down, strangers muttered and swore in the darkness.
每当我跟人家提到我曾经在费城待过一学期，我就会立刻感觉喉头打了个结，因为它让我想起当初在那些陌生道路上踏出的每一步，呼吸的每一口压抑空气中浓重的汽车尾气味，以及那时我的惶恐和绝望。那年八月，我搬进了西费城某干道旁一家没有电梯的公寓，头一天晚上就躺在难忍的酷热中一夜无眠。我把窗户打开，指望能吹进一点微弱的风，并等待外面那不熟悉的交通噪音消停下来，但它们根本没消停过。一整晚，路口红绿灯下的运货卡车发出刺耳的换档声；四层楼下，陌生的人们在黑暗中咕哝咒骂。
All around me were metaphors for my own dislocation: a homeless woman squatting in the grocery-store parking lot, indifferent to the puddle spreading below her; the sparrows and pigeons, all sepia and brown, that replaced the scolding blue jays and scarlet cardinals I’d left behind; even the first deep snow, which all my life I had longed to see, was flecked with soot when it finally arrived. I was so homesick for the natural world that I tamed a mouse who lived in my wall, placing stale Cheetos on the floor beyond me, just to feel the creature’s delicate feet skittering across my own bare toes.
身旁的一切都象征着我的错位：一个流浪女蹲在杂货店的停车场里，对她脚下的那摊液体不以为然；麻雀和鸽子都是清一色的棕褐色，而叽叽喳喳的蓝松鸦和红雀已被我抛在了身后；就连我长久以来盼望见到的积雪终于初次来到时，都染上了煤烟的印迹。我一心想念家乡的大自然，以至于驯养了墙里的一只老鼠。我把过期的奶酪放在身后的地板上，就为了感受那小动物的小脚在我的光脚丫旁哒哒跑过的触感。
Winter break came so early in December that it made no sense to go home for Thanksgiving, no matter how homesick I was. But as the dark nights grew longer and the cold winds blew colder, I wavered. Was it too late? Could I still change my mind?
十二月的寒假来得很早，不管我有多想家，都根本没必要回家过感恩节。但黑夜愈发漫长，冷风愈发冰冷，我还是动摇了。是不是太晚了？我改主意还来得及吗？
It was definitely too late. Of course. It was far, far too late. And I had papers to write. I had papers to grade. Also, I had no car, and forget booking a plane ticket so close to the holiday, even if I’d had money to spare for it, which on my graduate student’s stipend I most certainly did not. Amtrak was sold out, and the long, long bus ride seemed too daunting. I would be spending Thanksgiving in Philadelphia, a thousand miles from home.
当然，那肯定是太晚了。太晚太晚了。我还有论文要写，还得批别人的论文。而且，我也没有汽车，还忘了买机票，节日已经临近，就算挤出闲钱也买不到了，况且从我的研究生津贴里多半也挤不出来。国铁票已经售罄，而巴士旅程实在太漫长，让我灰了这条心。我要在离家千里的费城过感恩节了。
“I don’t think I can stand it here,” I said during the weekly call to my parents that Sunday. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
那周日，我在给父母打每周例行的电话时说：“我觉得我坚持不住了。我不知道我还能不能过下去。”
“Just come home,” my father said. I was crying by then. “It’s too late,” I said. “It’s way too late.”
我父亲说：“那就回家吧。”我哭着说：“太晚了，已经来不及了。”
“You can always come home, Sweet,” he said. “Even if you marry a bastard, you can always come on home.”
他说：“你什么时候想回家都可以，乖女儿。就算你嫁了个混球，也随时可以回家来。”
My father intended no irony in making this point. He had never read Thomas Wolfe — might never have heard of Thomas Wolfe. Those were words of loving reassurance from a parent to his child, a reminder that as long as he and my mother were alive, there would always be a place in the world for me, a place where I would always belong, even if I didn’t always believe I belonged there.
我父亲说这个时并没有反讽的意思。他从没读过托马斯·伍尔夫——他可能都从没听说过托马斯·伍尔夫。（
冬天毛注：美国小说家，著有小说《你不能再回家》/
You Can't Go Home Again
）这些话是作为父母的他对孩子的一番充满爱意的抚慰。他是在提醒我，只要他和我的母亲还健在，这世界上就总有我的容身之处，即便我有心离开，那里也将一直是我的归宿。
But I wonder now, three decades later, whether my father’s words were more than a reminder of my everlasting place in the family. I wonder now whether they were also an expression of his own longing for the days when all his chicks were still in the nest, when the circle was still closed and the family he and my mother had made was complete. We were an uncommonly close family, and I was the first child to leave home. But I gave no thought to my parents’ own loneliness as they pulled away from the curb in front of my apartment in Philadelphia, an empty U-Haul rattling behind Dad’s ancient panel van, for the drive back to Alabama without me.
三十年过去了，如今我却想到：或许父亲的话语所表示的不仅仅是我在家中永远不变的位置。我想，或许他也是在表达对那些雏鸡尚未离巢的日子的怀念，那时的关系圈还很封闭，他和我母亲创造的家庭还是完整的。虽然我们的家庭关系异常密切，我还是成了第一个离家的孩子。当父母从我在费城的公寓前的路边驱车离开回到阿拉巴马，空荡荡的U-Haul出租拖车在爸爸的老旧箱式货车后面哐啷作响时，我却没有想到父母自己的孤独。
I gave no thought to it then, but I think of it all the time now. My youngest child left for college in August, and this house has never seemed so empty. It’s not actually empty. My husband is still here, and my father-in-law still comes over for supper most nights. Because we have a big extended family and friends often passing through on their way somewhere else, hardly a week goes by without guests in our guest room. Last summer, anticipating my own sadness once our sons were at school, I put out the word in our neighborhood that I was happy to be a backup car pool driver or homework wrangler, but the presence of borrowed children in this house, though joyful, is also an aching reminder of the years gone by with my own.
我那时从未想过这些，现在却时时挂记。我最小的孩子在八月份离家上大学去了，这栋房子从来没有这么空旷过。其实房子并不是真的空了，我的丈夫还在，大部分时候我的公公也会过来吃晚饭。而且因为我们是一个大家庭，朋友们也经常路过，所以很少有一整个礼拜没有客人的时候。去年夏天，我因为预想到儿子们去上学后的凄凉，就在邻里打招呼说我愿意偶尔开车送孩子们去上学，或者监督他们做作业。别人家的孩子上门虽然也让我欢喜，但也让我痛觉：和自己的孩子们共度的岁月已经一去不复返。
No matter how full my life is with marriage and work and relatives and friends and the cares of citizenship in a struggling world, I miss my children. Every day, I miss my children, and as I wait for them to come home for Thanksgiving, I think of my father’s words across a bad landline connection in 1984 that reached my homesick heart in cold Philadelphia. I remember the 26-hour bus ride into the heart of Greyhound darkness that followed, a desperate journey that got me home in time for the squash casserole and the cranberry relish, and I hope my sons know now as surely as I knew it then, as surely as I have known it my entire life: Whatever happens, they can always come home. They can always, always come on home.
虽然婚姻、事业、亲朋好友，以及艰难时势下的民权工作都充实了我的生活，但我还是想念我的孩子们。每天我都在想念着自己的孩子们，而就在我等待他们回家过感恩节的现下，我想起了1984年父亲的那番话语，它们穿过信号不良的座机线路，来到寒冷的费城，滋润了我的思乡之心。我想起了那之后自己坐了26小时的大巴，在痛苦的旅程中深切感受了灰狗长途巴士的黑暗，然后终于及时到家，吃上了笋瓜砂锅和蔓越莓酱。我当初所确信的，我希望儿子们也能同样确信，那是我一生的信念：无论发生了什么，他们随时可以回家。他们随时、随时可以回家。
全文到此结束
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