您現在的位置: Language Tips> Book Channel> Pure English  
     





     
    All Mum's letters 家書
    [ 2008-02-11 11:27 ]

     

    To this day I remember my mum's letters. It all started in December 1941. Every night she sat at the big table in the kitchen and wrote to my brother Johnny, who had been drafted that summer. We had not heard from him since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

    I didn't understand why my mum kept writing Johnny when he never wrote back.

    "Wait and see-we'll get a letter from him one day," she claimed. Mum said that there was a direct link from the brain to the written word that was just as strong as the light God has granted us. She trusted that this light would find Johnny.

    I don't know if she said that to calm herself, dad or all of us down. But I do know that it helped us stick together, and one day a letter really did arrive. Johnny was alive on an island in the Pacific.

    I had always been amused by the fact that mum signed her letters, "Cecilia Capuzzi", and I teased her about that. "Why don't you just write 'Mum'?" I said.

    I hadn't been aware that she always thought of herself as Cecilia Capuzzi. Not as Mum. I began seeing her in a new light, this small delicate woman, who even in high-heeled shoes was barely one and a half meters tall.

    She never wore make-up or jewelry except for a wedding ring of gold. Her hair was fine, sleek and black and always put up in a knot in the neck. She wouldn't hear of getting a haircut or a perm. Her small silver-rimmed pince-nez only left her nose when she went to bed.

    Whenever mum had finished a letter, she gave it to dad for him to post it. Then she put the water on to boil, and we sat down at the table and talked about the good old days when our Italian-American family had been a family of ten: mum, dad and eight children. Five boys and three girls. It is hard to understand that they had all moved away from home to work, enroll in the army, or get married. All except me.

    Around next spring mum had got two more sons to write to. Every evening she wrote three different letters which she gave to me and dad afterwards so we could add our greetings.

    Little by little the rumour about mum's letters spread. One day a small woman knocked at our door. Her voice trembled as she asked: "Is it true you write letters?"

    "I write to my sons."

    "And you can read too?" whispered the woman.

    "Sure."

    The woman opened her bag and pulled out a pile of airmail letters. "Read… please read them aloud to me."

    The letters were from the woman's son who was a soldier in Europe, a red-haired boy who mum remembered having seen sitting with his brothers on the stairs in front of our house. Mum read the letters one by one and translated them from English to Italian. The woman's eyes welled up with tears. "Now I have to write to him," she said. But how was she going to do it?

    "Make some coffee, Octavia," mum yelled to me in the living room while she took the woman with her into the kitchen and seated her at the table. She took the fountain pen, ink and air mail notepaper and began to write. When she had finished, she read the letter aloud to the woman.

    "How did you know that was exactly what I wanted to say?"

    "I often sit and look at my boys' letters, just like you, without a clue about what to write."

    A few days later the woman returned with a friend, then another one and yet another one--they all had sons who fought in the war, and they all needed letters. Mum had become the correspondent in our part of town. Sometimes she would write letters all day long.

    Mum always insisted that people signed their own letters, and the small woman with the grey hair asked mum to teach her how to do it. "I so much want to be able to write my own name so that my son can see it." Then mum held the woman's hand in hers and moved her hand over the paper again and again until she was able to do it without her help.

    After that day, when mum had written a letter for the woman, she signed it herself, and her face brightened up in a smile.

    One day she came to us, and mum instantly knew what had happened. All hope had disappeared from her eyes. They stood hand in hand for a long time without saying a word. Then mum said: "We better go to church. There are certain things in life so great that we cannot comprehend them." When mum came back home, she couldn't get the red-haired boy out of her mind.

    After the war was over, mum put away the pen and paper. "Finito," she said. But she was wrong. The women who had come to her for help in writing to their sons now came to her with letters from their relatives in Italy. They also came to ask her for her help in getting American citizenship.

    On one occasion mum admitted that she had always had a secret dream of writing a novel. "Why didn't you?" I asked.

    "All people in this world are here with one particular purpose," she said. "Apparently, mine is to write letters." She tried to explain why it absorbed her so.

    "A letter unites people like nothing else. It can make them cry, it can make them laugh. There is no caress more lovely and warm than a love letter, because it makes the world seem very small, and both sender and receiver become like kings in their own kingdoms. My dear, a letter is life itself!"

    Today all mum's letters are lost. But those who got them still talk about her and cherish the memory of her letters in their hearts.

    (來源:三人行英語網 英語點津姍姍編輯)

     
     
    相關文章 Related Stories
     

     

     

     
     

    本頻道最新推薦

         
      The Flower Drum Song 花鼓戲
      A Funny Memory 童真記趣
      Perfume
      Love in a Fallen City 傾城之戀
      父親之間的默契

    論壇熱貼

         
      我修習英文12年的經驗
      我們可以達到母語是英語國家人的水平嗎?
      常見的英語介詞短語搭配
      The Spring Festival Draws Near
      “河流湖泊密集之地”如何翻譯好?
      可譯還是不可譯---"鼠"不盡?




    精品无码一级毛片免费视频观看| 麻豆国产原创中文AV网站| 亚洲AV永久无码精品一区二区国产| 免费看无码特级毛片| 被夫の上司に犯中文字幕| 国产成人精品无码免费看| 亚洲AV中文无码乱人伦| 国产日产欧洲无码视频无遮挡| 自慰无码一区二区三区| 中文字幕在线观看亚洲日韩| 永久免费无码网站在线观看个| 无码人妻精品一区二区在线视频| 午夜无码中文字幕在线播放| 超清中文乱码字幕在线观看| 成?∨人片在线观看无码| 亚洲av中文无码乱人伦在线r▽| 日本高清免费中文在线看| 色综合久久综合中文综合网| 日韩免费a级毛片无码a∨| 国产成人精品无码免费看| 少妇人妻无码精品视频app| 亚洲AV综合色区无码一区爱AV| 日韩精品一区二三区中文| 日韩欧群交P片内射中文| 中文 在线 日韩 亚洲 欧美| 五月婷婷无码观看| 亚洲午夜福利精品无码| 久久99久久无码毛片一区二区| 免费无码VA一区二区三区| 日韩精品无码专区免费播放| 亚洲国产精品成人精品无码区在线| 无码av高潮喷水无码专区线| 综合久久久久久中文字幕亚洲国产国产综合一区首 | 最近的中文字幕大全免费8| 亚洲最大激情中文字幕| 中文字幕亚洲欧美专区| 久久精品中文字幕无码绿巨人| 人妻AV中文字幕一区二区三区| 亚洲综合日韩中文字幕v在线| 国产中文字幕在线免费观看| 免费中文字幕视频|