失去與放手

人生即失去與放手，尤其是父母與孩子之間。正如龍應臺所說："所謂的父女母子一場，只不過意味著，你和他的緣分就是今生今世不斷地在目送他的背影漸行漸遠。你站立在小路的這一端，看著他逐漸消失在小路轉彎的地方，而且，他用背影默默告訴你：不必追。"

By Tim Lott

凡路 選注

The most resonant truth about children is that they disappear. Slowly, gradually, but eventually. Children in that sense are clocks, marking the passage of time with each new stage of growth. To see a child disappear—or rather, to become aware in any acute way of their disappearance—is to become aware of losing something you have loved more than anything you have loved in your life before, or will again.

Watching our children grow is—in an odd, inverted way—like watching our parents grow old and die. If we mourn in both cases it is perhaps because we are also weeping for ourselves—for our own impermanence, for our own mortality. For we also mark time, less visibly, in our own bodies.

As our children grow, we are also mourning the passing of a role—of ourselves as protectors, indispensable, loved passionately with the need and rose-colored tints only children and infatuated lovers can offer us. Think of how these processes of mourning are recorded in song, from "Slipping Through My Fingers All the Time" (Abba), "Brown Eyed Girl" (Van Morrison) to the even more heartbreaking "Turn Around". My favorite version, by Nanci Griffith, reduces me to tears (and that's not just a casual expression—it really does make me weep). And yet I go back to the song again and again. Why? What are the tears for? And why do I court them?

They are tears, partly, for loss. As such, they are simply sentimental—or at least, unnecessary. Because all life is entwined with loss. Transience is what makes life beautiful and worth living. All that comes and goes away is the heart of beauty. Children are simply the most vivid and meaningful examples of evanescence.

So, there are many kinds of tears. Perhaps we weep at a sad song about children growing up partly because we perceive the process as tragic. But they may also be tears of the recognition of beauty, because this changing is profound, and brings us most closely into touch with the heart of life itself.

In any case, the idea that we are losing love as our children grow is not true. The love I feel for my two eldest daughters, in their 20s now, is undiminished with the passing of time. I don't get to express it so much, and they don't feel the need to. They are independent. And that is a job well done as far as I am concerned. Yet when I look at them sometimes, I feel exactly the same emotion I felt when they were barely walking, and helpless.

We do not lose our children—not unless we are very unlucky, or very bad parents, or they are very atypical children. If our desires to hold on to our children really took root, and were acted out, it would be a disaster. This is doubtless the fate of many over-parented children. Such children could not emotionally leave home, ever.

We must let go, and then let go and then let go. And eventually they, too, must let go, as their parents pass out of this life, at first gradually then entirely and finally. I have already "lost" my children many times—as babies, as toddlers, as infants. They are always being made anew—and yet are always, at some deep level, the same. Parallel changes are happening to me, too, if I am doing it right. That is, I am always losing my children only in the sense that I am always losing myself.

For if I am static as a fully grown adult, then I am doing something wrong. I am holding on to myself too tightly, just as some parents hold on to their children too tightly. Life, yes, is loss and letting go. But without that loss and letting go, it would be like a plastic flower. Indestructible, but ultimately valueless.

Vocabulary

1. resonant: 回響的，引起共鳴的。

2. 看著孩子漸漸消失，或者猛地意識到他們已消失不見，就是發現你正在失去生命中曾經的，也是未來永遠的最愛。

3. inverted: 反轉的，反向的。

4. mourn: 悼念，感到悲痛；impermanence: 短暫，倏忽無常；mortality: 生命的有限。

5. 伴隨著孩子的成長，我們也在哀悼自己作為必要保護者的角色的逝去——曾經那份被需要的、玫瑰色的熱切的愛，只有孩子和熱戀中的愛人才能給予。indispensable: 不可或缺的；tint: 色調；infatuated: [?n'f?t?uet?d] 熱戀的。

6. Abba: 阿巴樂隊，是瑞典的流行組合，于1982年解散；Van Morrison: 范?莫里森（1945— ），是北愛爾蘭搖滾奇人、愛爾蘭近代民謠革命運動代表之一及搖滾的精神宗師。

7. Nanci Griffith: 南西?葛瑞芬（1954— ），美國歌手，被譽為"山地民謠女王"；reduce sb. to tears: 使某人流淚。

8. court: v. 招致，釀成。

9. be entwined with: 與……有著緊密的聯系，與……交織在一起。

10. transience: 短暫，無常。

11. evanescence: /??v??n?sn's/ 消失，消散。

12. perceive: 將……視為，認為。

13. undiminished: 未減少的，未減弱的。

14. atypical: 非典型的，反常的。

15. 如果我們執意要抓住孩子不放手，并將這種想法付諸實踐的話，那會成為一種災難。

16. toddler: 學步的兒童。

17. parallel: 同時發生的，相應的。

18. static: 靜止的，不變的。

19. indestructible: 不可摧毀的。

（來源：英語學習雜志 編輯：董靜）