唯美的英語美文:The Blue Color
The Blue Color
It was a small thing, but a link to another world.
By Noelle Oxenhandler from Reader’s Digest
“What did you do today?” my husband asked me one evening when I was sitting at the dinner table, stuck and silent, like a pillar of salt.
“Nothing,” I said. It had been one of those days that dissolve in a whir of unsuccessful errands, unreturned phone calls, malfunctioning machinery, piles of junk mail.
But our daughter, Ariel. six at the time, looked at me across the table as if she’d caught me in a big lie. “That’s not true!” she said. “You did a lot today.”
“Like what?” I asked, surprised.
“You mixed that color of blue paint that I wanted for my clay necklace. You crawled under my bed and found that shoe I was looking for. And you went to the store and bought four tapioca puddings.”
That moment for me was a bit like those duck-rabbit drawings that when you stare at them, transform into a completely different shape.
Without hesitating, Ariel had reeled off my day’s achievements—yet her list had nothing to do with the one I had made that morning. I made me aware that normally I look at myself through such a narrow lens that when I tally up at the end of the day, much of what I’ve done doesn’t even make it onto my list. Finish book review, workshop calls, cat medicine might appear. But the color blue? Never.
Still, while I might never consider the purchase of four tapioca puddings as the lion’s share of a day well spent, there was something about Ariel’s list that came through like the sound of a small bell in fog. In the wake of that conversation, whenever I felt myself wither in my own harsh stare, I would try to bask in her more forgiving gaze.
If we are, in a poet’s phrase, “small gods” to our children, they are, in their own way, small gods to us. They devour our time, but they also lavish upon us their own brand of infinity, the infinity of the unhurried present moment.
Though Ariel is now 13, she still possesses an uncanny ability to throw me off course. The other night I dreamed that I was late for all my meetings and had brought all the wrong papers. I awoke feeling tight with anxiety and staggered into the kitchen to make coffee. Ariel, already up, followed me and said, “Wait.”
“What?” I snapped.
“ I want to put this tattoo on you,” she said. She made me stand there a full minute as she pressed a paper tattoo against the side of my face with a mildewy-smelling sponge. I wanted to scream. But I didn’t. And for the rest of the day, whenever I glanced in the mirror, I was surprised to see a small blue squirrel next to my eye. I resisted the impulse to wash it off. After all, I reminded myself, soon my daughter will be caught in the same time vise as I, and then where will I turn for those utterly unexpected moments of release from my own agenda?
Isn’t this one of the reasons we wanted children in the first place—to rearrange the rigid shapes of our lives, take our ducks-in-a-row and in a sudden shimmer, turn them into rabbits and back again?
One day, when Ariel was three and I was at my desk working hard, she sat at my feet in deep concentration. One by one she removed the long punched-hole edges of computer paper that I had thrown in the wastebasket, and bit by bit she stuffed them into a red sock. It was a large sock, and it took her small hands a long time to fill it.
Since that time I’ve never been able to part with that sock. I look back at that scene, and this is what I see: a mother, frantic under deadline, sits hunched at her desk. At her feet is her daughter, linking her mother to another world. In this world there are no deadlines. Work is play, and there’s all the time in the world to do it. In this world an orphaned red sock is filled to overflowing with what a mother has cast out. In this world “you mixed the color blue” can be a fitting epitaph—not just for a day, but for a life.
-
通用晚安正能量語錄27句
你問我愛你值不值得,其實你應該知道,愛就是不問值得不值得。晚安!以下是小編精心整理的晚安正能量語錄27句,歡迎大家前來欣賞。1、大喜易失言,大怒易失禮,大驚易失態,大哀易失顏,大樂易失察,大懼易失節,大思易失愛,大醉易失德,大話易失信,大欲易失命。2、只有長得好看、具...
-
關於工作心語大全(通用100句)
如果你想攀登高峯,切莫把彩虹當作梯子。本文是小編為各位讀者收集的工作心語,一起來看看吧。1、在企業中,每一步工作的開展都需要員工來完成,去進行以人為本的人力資源管理理念是驗證企業決策正確性和實現企業經營目標的重要保障。每一位員工都有自身的社會需求,這...
-
經典心情不好個性心語大全(通用70句)
男人需要友情更需要懂他的女人,女人總説男人沒好東西,女人給男人帶來的傷害是一樣的都是彼此彼此而已。這篇文章是小編幫大家整理的心情不好個性心語,趕緊一起來看看吧。1、蒼白的記憶,詮釋着過去的一切,不可能去忘記,也不想去回憶。2、我可以忘記任何人,但是無法忘記...
-
推薦早安文案彙總150句
只願多年以後不管你我關係如何只想當你談起我時告訴別人你也愛過我不曾後悔過早安!以下這篇是小編特地為大家收集的早安文案,一起來看一下吧。1、人生由三天組成,昨天、今天和明天。如果你在忙碌的今天為了昨天的失敗或不幸而哭泣,那麼你的今天就只剩下了淚水。試...
相關文章
- The Unforgettable School Trip英語作文
- 六年級英語Unit 1 Welcome back to school教學設計
- 英語美文閲讀:Kerry: Anti-IS Coalition Could Contribute to B
- 2017牛津譯林版英語Unit3Welcometoourschool!家庭作業
- Covering the ears to steal the bell高中英語作文
- 英語美文:Bush, watch out for the pretzels
- Will Robot Take the Place of Men英語作文
- The world Cup Football Final英語作文
- 英語作文Look at the cloud is the weather
- 大學聯考英語作文美人的膚色 The Skin Color of Beauty