雙語散文:迴歸童真

Sarah came running in." Look what I found." Over the top of the paper I was reading came a crispy, crumbling long object that caused me to jump. It was a snake skin that had been shed by one of our many garden snakes.

"Isn't it beautiful?" said my wide-eyed seven-year-old.

薩拉跑進來。“看，我發現了什麼。”我正在看報，一條卷長的有點支離破碎的東西出現在報紙上，把我嚇得跳了起來。那是一條蛇的蛻皮，我們的花園裏有很多蛇。

“它難道不漂亮嗎？”我那7歲的小女兒眨着她的大眼睛問道。

I stared at the organic wrapper and thought to myself that it really wasn’ t that beautiful, but I have learned never to appear nonchalant or jaded with children. Everything they see for the first time is elementary to their sense of beauty and creativity; they see only merit and excellence in the world until educated otherwise.

"Why does it do this?" Sarah asked.

Robert, ever the innocent comedian, said:"We have a naked snake in our garden!"

我看着那條蛇皮，自忖它實在算不上漂亮，但我明白決不能對孩子冷淡抑或感到厭煩。孩子們初次見到的東西對於他們是形成美感以及創造力的基礎。在接受相關教育之前，他們應當只會看到世上美好的事物。

薩拉問：“蛇爲什麼要蛻皮？”

曾經做過天真喜劇演員的羅伯特說：“我們花園裏有一條光着身子的蛇。”

I also try to customize every opportunity to teach my children that there is almost always something beyond the obvious; that there is something else going on besides what they see in front of them.”Snakes shed their skin because they need to renew themselves,” I explained. As is so often the case in my family, the original subject leads to another and another, until we are discussing something quite different.

我也利用一切機會教給孩子們知道任何事物不單有其表像，更有其深層原因的含義。 我解釋說：”蛇爲了獲得新生，所以要蛻皮。”正如我家常常出現的情況，最初的話題會引出其它一個又一個新問題，直到我們談論的內容與最初的毫不沾邊爲止。

"Why do they need to renew themselves?" Sarah asked.

Robert quipped:" 'Cos they don't like who they are and they want to be someone else."

Sarah and I politely ignored her brother. I suddenly remembered an article on this page many years ago where the writer was expressing her concept of renewal. She used layers of paper over a wall to describe how we hide our original selves, and said that by peeling away those layers one by one, we see the underlying original beneath.

薩拉問：“蛇爲什麼要獲得新生？”

羅伯特詼諧地說：“因爲它們不喜歡自己的樣子，想要變成另外的樣子。”

薩拉和我沒再理會她哥哥。我忽然記起許多年前報上曾有一篇文章，作者表述了她對新生的看法：她用糊在牆壁上的一層層的壁紙來形容我們是如何將真實的自我隱藏起來的，並且說一層一層地剝去那些壁紙，我們便會發現藏在下面的純真。

"We often need to shed our skins, those coatings and facades that we cover ourselves with," I said to my now absorbed daughter. "We outgrow some things and find other stuff unwanted or unnecessary. This snake no longer needs this skin. It is probably too stiff and crinkly for him, and he probably doesn't think he looks as smart in it as he once did. Like buying a new suit."

Of course, I' m sure this explanation won't sit well with bonafide naturalists. But Sarah was getting the point. As we talked, I knew that she began to comprehend, albeit slightly, that renewal is part of progress; that we need to take a good look at ourselves, and our rooms and schoolwork and creativity and spirituality, and see what we need to keep and what we need to cast off. I was careful to point out that this is a natural process, not one to be forced.

我告訴全神貫注的小女兒：“我們常常要’蛻皮’，換掉身上那些衣服。我們長大了，有些東西不想要了，有些不需要了。這條蛇不再需要這張皮了。可能是蛇感到這張皮既僵硬又難看，穿在身上不像以前那麼漂亮。就像買一套新衣服那樣。”

當然了，我敢肯定這樣的解釋不能讓真正的博物學家滿意。但薩拉聽明白了。談話間，我知道薩拉儘管是朦朦朧朧的，但理解了新生是進步的一部分，理解到我們需要好好審視自我、房間、功課、創造力以及靈性，想想需要留下什麼，摒棄哪些。我用心地解釋這是自然過程，並非強迫着去做的。

"Snakes don' t peel off their skin when they feel like it." I explained. "It happens as a natural consequence of their growth."

"I see, Dad," said Sarah and jumped off my lap, grabbed the snakeskin, and ran off.

I hoped she would remember this. That often, in order to find our real selves underneath the layers of community and culture with which we cloak ourselves year after year, we need to start examining these layers. We need to gently peel some away, as we recognize them to be worthless, unnecessary, or flawed; or at best, store the discarded ones as mementoes of our promotion to a better vitality or spirit.

我解釋說：“蛇喜歡它的皮的時侯，就不會蛻皮。隨着它們的生長，蛻皮是自然的過程。”

薩拉說：“爸爸，我懂了。”說完從我腿上跳下去，拿着蛇皮跑了。

我希望她能記住這一次。爲了找尋年復一年爲社會和環境所掩蓋的真正的自我，我們需要檢查這些“壁紙”，一旦認識到它們毫無價值，不再需要或者有缺陷，需要輕輕剝去一些，最好是將那些摒棄的東西塵封在記憶中，激勵我們更有活力和更有精神地前進。