学进去

   I’ve loved my mother’s desk since I was just tall enough to sit above the top of it. Mother sat writing letters. Standing by her chair, looking at the ink bottle, pens, and white paper, I decided that the action of writing must be a most wonderful thing in the world.

Years later, during her final illness, mother kept different things for my sister and brother. “But the desk,” she said again, “is for Elizabeth.”

I never saw her angry, and never saw her cry. I knew she loved me; she just did it. But as a voting girl, I wanted to have heart-to-heart talks between mother and daughter. They never happened. And a gulf opened between us. I was too emotional(易感动的)”. But she lived “on the surface(表面)”.

As years passed, I had my own family. I loved my mother and thanked her for our happy family, I wrote to her in careful words and asked her to let me know in any way she chose that she did forgive(原谅) me.

My hope turned to disappointment, then little interest and, finally, peace—it seemed that nothing happened. I couldn’t be sure that the letter had even got to mother, I only knew that I had written it, and I could stop trying to make her into someone she was not.

But the present of her desk told me, as she’d never been able to, that she was pleased that writing my chosen work. I cleaned the desk carefully and found some papers inside—a photo of my father a one-page letter, folded and refolded many times. It was my letter.

“In any way you chose, mother, you always chose the act that speaks louder than words.”