我八歲開始學習鋼琴，老師換了一個又一個，鋼琴課總是讓我歡喜讓我憂。63歲時，我終于發現：原來人生可以有更好的選擇。

By Judy Pollard Smith

陳子涵 選注

I was eight when I met my first piano teacher. I remember everything about her.

Tuesdays after school I would drag my reluctant little-girl self down the hill toward her brown-brick house by the shoe factory.[1]

Every trudging step took me closer to the doom I knew awaited.[2] Sameness[3] ruled in the piano teacher’s house—let’s call her Mrs. Kaufman. I assumed there was a Mr. Kaufman stuffed away in a corner somewhere, but I never laid eyes on him. The only dress I remember on Mrs. Kaufman matched the colour of the bricks of her house. Her grey hair was pulled back in a chignon so tightly that it stretched the corners of her mouth into a taut blue line.[4]

I’d step into the gloom of the hallway and hang my coat on one of the wooden pegs.[5] She would usher me wordlessly into her sitting room.[6] The heavy damask[7] curtains, I imagined, had never been drawn during the 200 years that I was certain she had lived there with the invisible Mr. Kaufman.

Mrs. Kaufman would begin each lesson with a throat-clearing sound that I roughly translated into “take your seat”. I knew enough to leave room on the hard bench[8] for her to join me. On the shelf by the music sat her long wooden stick, meant to refashion recalcitrant schoolgirl fingers into well-rounded arches.[9] Now and again I’d feel its light tap upon my knuckles.[10] On occasion, Mrs. Kaufman would daub[11] the end of her nose with a lace handkerchief. The hanky would then disappear into the folds of her brown dress.[12]

I wonder now, with age and some knowledge of how to encourage children, whether I might have coaxed something resembling music out of those piano keys if Mrs. Kaufman had smiled at me from time to time or had dispensed with her wooden stick.[13] If I had switched to something relevant instead of playing “The Happy Farmer” ad nauseam[14], maybe I might have shown some progress.

There were other teachers as our family moved from place to place for my father’s work. For one bright and shining year, my sister and I took joint lessons from a young woman who lived in a sun-filled apartment with her husband and, wonder of wonders, their cherubic baby.[15] We raced to get there, to see the baby, to bask[16] in the teacher’s encouragement, to learn lilting new tunes as we sat side by side happily. She held a recital[17]. Our mom made us matching taffeta[18] dresses. We drank fizzy drinks[19] and won small prizes.

And then, too soon, a new town and a new piano teacher in another stuffy room where joy and fun were as locked away as if they’d been encased inside a Victorian bell jar.[20] Another two years of torturous lessons, another two years of giggling once we got out the door, wondering where on earth her handkerchief had ended up once she cast it into the depths of her gargantuan bosom.[21]

And then, when my own three children were tiny, fate brought me the most wonderful of European-trained teachers. Anna promised that one day, if I worked hard, she would let me migrate from the upright in her den to the baby grand in her sitting room.[22] For the first time in my life of lessons I felt the music filling me up, like an unborn baby, ready to leap and grow. It wasn’t to be. Anna met a sad death crossing the busy street near her home, a sudden ending at the end of a very long life.

Nine months ago, at the age of 63, I rented a cello[23].

I’ve always wanted to play the cello. My teacher, Rosemary, is a vivace[24] kind of girl. She has yellow sunflowers on her curtains. She takes kickboxing[25] lessons and I’ve never seen her blow her nose with a lace hanky. She owns no evil wooden stick with which to knock my fingers into place. She tells me that if I keep at it the sound of honking Canada geese from my strings will soon sound like larks ascending.[26] She knows I’m not too old to love happy-face stickers[27]. She never wears brown.

My fingers speed through the exercises in the minor keys that sound sad and haunting and Russian.[28]

“Slow down,” she whispers. But slowing down is not an option. She doesn’t know how long I’ve waited.

I knew, even at 8, that there had to be a better way. It just took me a while to find it.

Vocabulary

1. drag: 拖，拽；reluctant: 不情愿的，勉強的。

2. trudging: 步履艱難的；doom:（不可避免的）厄運，劫數；await: 將發生，將降臨到（某人身上）。

3. sameness: 千篇一律，單調。

4. chignon:（女人的）發髻；taut: 拉緊的，繃緊的。

5. gloom: 黑暗，陰暗；wooden peg: 木制衣釘。

6. usher: 引，領；wordlessly: 默默無言地。

7. damask: 緞子。

8. bench: 長凳，長椅。

9. refashion: 改造，改變；recalcitrant: 難對付的，難駕馭的；well-rounded arches: （讓手指彎成）形態優美的拱形（即手指以正確的姿勢彈奏鋼琴）。

10. now and again: 時而，不時；tap: 輕敲，輕拍；knuckle: 指節，指關節。

11. daub: （胡亂）涂抹。

12. hanky: 手帕；fold: 褶子。

13. 如今，隨著年齡的增長，我也了解了一些如何鼓勵孩子的知識。我想知道，如果考夫曼夫人當初能夠不時對我微笑以待，或者摒棄她的木棍的話，我是否能從鋼琴的琴鍵中收獲音樂之類的東西。

14. ad nauseam:（某事重復次數太頻繁以至于）煩人地，令人作嘔地。

15. wonder: 奇妙之處；cherubic: 天真無邪的，可愛的。

16. bask:（在某種環境或氣氛中）感到舒適，感到樂趣。

17. recital: 獨奏會。

18. taffeta: 塔夫綢做的。

19. fizzy drink: 充氣飲料（如香檳酒、汽水）。

20. stuffy: 悶的，空氣不好的；encase: 把……裝入箱（或盒、袋、套內）；Victorian: 維多利亞時代的；bell jar: 鐘形玻璃罩。

21. torturous: 痛苦的；giggle: 咯咯地笑；on earth: 究竟，到底；gargantuan: 巨大的；bosom: 胸部。

22. upright: 此處指豎式鋼琴；den: 小房間；baby grand: 小型臥式鋼琴。

23. cello: 大提琴。

24. vivace: 活潑的。

25. kickboxing: 跆拳道。

26. 她告訴我，如果堅持練習，我的大提琴發出的加拿大鵝叫很快就會變成云雀飛上天時的叫聲。

27. sticker: 有背膠的標簽。

28. minor key: 小調；haunting: 給人強烈感受的，使人不安的；Russian:（音樂）俄羅斯風格的，具有堅定、雄厚、細膩隱秘的特點。

（來源：英語學習雜志）