 一朵栀子花 从12岁起，每年我的生日，我家都会收到一枝白色的栀子花。没有卡片说明花是谁送的。给花店打电话问询也不得而知。后来，我不再想弄清送花的人了，只是沉醉在用柔和的粉色花纸包裹的那朵美丽的白花里。 但是我还是常常幻想，那个给我送花的，到底是怎样一个人。我在幻想中度过了很多快乐的时光。妈妈非常鼓励我的这些幻想。她还让我试着回忆，是否我曾对某个人有过特别的恩惠？我想或许是住在街对面的那个老人吧。我曾经在冬天给他送过信。可我毕竟是个女孩，有时候我更愿意幻想那个神秘的送花人，是我曾经邂逅的某个男孩子。 我毕业之前一个月，父亲去世了。我难过极了，对毕业舞会完全没有了兴致，也不在乎自己有没有新裙子穿。妈妈尽管也很伤心，但是她是不会让我错过这些的，她想让自己的女儿感受到人们的宠爱，感到自己是个可爱的女孩子。其实，妈妈想让她的孩子们把自己看作一朵朵栀子花—可爱、坚强、完美，或许还有那么一点神秘。 妈妈在我结婚十天后就去世了。那年我才22岁。从那以后，我再也没有收到过栀子花。 Every year on my birthday, from the time I turned 12, a white gardenia was delivered to my house. No card came with it. Calls to the flower-shop were not helpful at all. After a while I stopped trying to discover the sender's name and just delighted in the beautiful white flower in soft pink paper. But I never stopped imagining who the giver might be. Some of my happiest moments were spent daydreaming about the sender. My mother encouraged these imaginings.She'd ask me if there was someone for whom I had done special kindness. Perhaps it was the old man across the street whose mail I'd delivered during the winter. As a girl, I had more fun imagining that it might be a boy I had run into. One month before my graduation, my father died, I felt so sad that I became completely uninterested in my upcoming graduation dance, and I didn't care if I had a new dress or not. But my mother, in her own sadness, would not let me miss any of those things. She wanted her children to feel loved and lovable. In truth, my mother wanted her children to see themselves much like the gardenia-lovely, strong and perfect with perhaps a bit of mystery. My mother died ten days after I was married. I was 22. That was the year the gardenia stopped coming. |
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