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.

蓝颜色
这虽是小事一桩，却与另一世界相连
By Noelle Oxenhandler  邹红云 译

“你今天做了什么事？” 一天晚上，丈夫这样问我，当时我呆呆地坐在餐桌边，沉默不语，宛如盐柱一般。

 “没做什么。”我说。 那一天就和平常许多日子一样，时光在忙乱中流逝：办事连连不顺，一个个电话打出去却杳无回音， 机器发生故障，垃圾邮件一堆又一堆。

 然而，我们的女儿阿丽尔，当时六岁，在桌子对面看着我，好象逮到了我撒的一个弥天大谎似的。“你没说真话！”她说道，“今天你做了许多事。”

 “你说我做了什么？”我问，心里惊诧万分。

 “你给我调配出了那种我想涂在陶土项链上的蓝颜色。 你爬到我的床底下找到了我一直在找的那只鞋。 还有，你到店里去买了四个木薯布丁。”

 那一刻对于我，颇有点象那些鸭子变兔子画一般：在你凝神注视时，它们就会变成全然不同的形状。

 阿丽尔毫不含糊地列数了我一天的成绩——然而，她所列的功绩与我那天早晨给自己所列的要做之事并无相关之处。 这使我意识到自己平常是在通过多么狭小的透镜看待自己，在我清点一日中所做之事时，做过的许多事甚至都没被列上去。 完成书评，给工作室打电话，为猫买药可能会被罗列进去。可蓝颜料？决不会。

 虽然我可能永远不会将买四个木薯布丁看作是一天过得不错的一个主要因素，但阿丽尔的列数，就如同迷雾中的小铃铛传来的声音，让我觉得颇有些道理。 自那次交谈以后，每当我在自己苛刻的目光下感到萎蘼之时，我就会乐于置身在她那更为宽容的注视之下。

 如果象一位诗人描述的那样，我们是孩子的“小小之神”的话，那么他们以自己独特的方式也成了我们的小小之神。 他们占用了我们的时间，但他们同时也馈赠给我们他们所特有的无限，使得不慌不忙的此时此刻能无限延伸。

 尽管阿丽尔已十三岁了，她仍具备一种不可思议的本领，能使我游离正轨。 有一晚，我梦见自己所有的会议都迟到了而且所有的文件都带错了。 我醒来时觉得特别焦虑紧张，踉踉跄跄地走进厨房煮咖啡。这时阿丽尔已经起床，她跟在我后面说：“等一等。”

 “怎么啦？”我厉声以对。

 “我想给你印个图案。”她说。 她让我站在那儿足足有一分钟，用一块带有霉味的海绵将一张纹身图案纸紧压在我的一侧脸上。 我想尖叫，但没叫出声来。 这一天，每当我扫视镜中，都会因看到眼角边的一只蓝色小松鼠而不免诧异。 我克制着冲动，不去将它洗掉。毕竟，我提醒自己，女儿不久也会落入与我一样的时间桎梏，到时候我上哪儿才能得到那些全然意想不到的瞬间，使我能从自己的工作日程里解脱出来一下？

 重新安排我们刻板的生活模式，手拿鸭子成排的画，微光一闪变成了兔子，然后又变回来，这难道不是我们原先想要孩子的一个原因吗？

 阿丽尔三岁时的一天，我坐在桌边努力工作，她则坐在我脚边全神贯注地忙自己的事。她将我扔在废纸篓里的计算机纸上打了孔的那些长长的窄边一条一条地扯下来，一点一点地塞进一只红色的袜子里，这只袜子很大，她用那双小手费了好多工夫才将它塞满。

 从那以后，我一直不舍得扔掉那只袜子。回想当时的情景，出现在我眼前的是这样一个画面：一位母亲为最后期限所逼，性急慌忙，伏身书桌前。在她的脚边坐着小女，将其母亲与另一世界相连。在这个世界里，没有种种最后期限所迫，工作就是玩耍，天底下所有的时间尽可用来做此事。 在这个世界里，单只的红袜子被母亲所丢弃的东西塞得鼓鼓的。

在这个世界里，“你调配了蓝颜色”可成为恰当的悼文——不只适合你的一天，而且适合你的一生。

注释：

a pillar of salt : 圣经创世纪第十九章中讲了这样一个故事：所多玛城罪恶的声音在耶和华面前甚大，神将毁灭这地方。在天降硫磺和大火之前，耶和华差两个天使来，告诉唯一的义人罗得，叫他带家眷逃离，并嘱咐他千万不要回头看。在逃离的时候，罗得的妻子忍不住回头一看，就变成了一根盐柱