英語美文：愛在無語時
英語美文：愛在無語時
以下是小編整理的情感類英語美文欣賞：愛在無語時， 希望對你有所感觸。
愛在無語時
In the doorway of my home, I looked closely at theface of my 23-year-old son, Daniel, his backpack byhis side. We were saying good-bye. In a few hourshe would be flying to France. He would be stayingthere for at least a year to learn another languageand experience life in a different country.
It was a transitional time in Daniel‘s life, a passage,a step from college into the adult world. I wanted toleave him some words that would have somemeaning, some significance beyond the moment.
But nothing came from my lips. No sound broke the stillness of my beachside home. Outside, Icould hear the shrill cries of sea gulls as they circled the ever changing surf on Long Island.Inside, I stood frozen and quiet, looking into the searching eyes of my son.
What made it more difficult was that I knew this was not the first time I had let such a momentpass. When Daniel was five, I took him to the school-bus stop on his first day of kindergarten. Ifelt the tension in his hand holding mine as the bus turned the corner. I saw colour flush hischeeks as the bus pulled up. He looked at me-as he did now.
What is it going to be like, Dad? Can I do it? Will I be okay? And then he walked up the steps ofthe bus and disappeared inside. And the bus drove away. And I had said nothing.
A decade or so later, a similar scene played itself out. With his mother, I drove him to Williamand Mary College in Virginia. His first night, he went out with his new schoolmates, and when hemet us the next morning, he was sick. He was coming down with mononucleosis, but we couldnot know that then. We thought he had a hangover.
In his room, Dan lay stretched out on his bed as I started to leave for the trip home. I tried tothink of something to say to give him courage and confidence as he started this new phase oflife.
Again, words failed me. I mumbled something like, "Hope you feel better Dan." And I left.
Now, as I stood before him, I thought of those lost opportunities. How many times have we alllet such moments pass? A boy graduates from school, a daughter gets married. We go throughthe motions of the ceremony, but we don‘t seek out our children and find a quiet moment totell them what they have meant to us. Or what they might expect to face in the years ahead.
How fast the years had passed. Daniel was born in New Orleans, LA., in 1962, slow to walk andtalk, and small of stature. He was the tiniest in his class, but he developed a warm, outgoingnature and was popular with his peers. He was coordinated and 6)agile, and he became adeptin sports.
Baseball gave him his earliest challenge. He was an outstanding pitcher in Little League, andeventually, as a senior in high school, made the varsity, winning half the team‘s games with arecord of five wins and two losses. At graduation, the coach named Daniel the team‘s mostvaluable player.
His finest hour, though, came at a school science fair. He entered an exhibit showing how thecirculatory system works. It was primitive and crude, especially compared to the fancy,computerized, blinking-light models entered by other students. My wife, Sara, feltembarrassed for him.
It turned out that the other kids had not done their own work-their parents had made theirexhibits. As the judges went on their rounds, they found that these other kids couldn‘t answertheir questions. Daniel answered every one. When the judges awarded the Albert EinsteinPlaque for the best exhibit, they gave it to him.
By the time Daniel left for college he stood six feettall and weighed 170 pounds. He was muscular andin superb condition, but he never pitched anotherinning, having given up baseball for Englishliterature. I was sorry that he would not develop hisathletic talent, but proud that he had made such amature decision.
One day I told Daniel that the great failing in my lifehad been that I didn‘t take a year or two off to travelwhen I finished college. This is the best way, to myway of thinking, to broaden oneself and develop alarger perspective on life. Once I had married and begun working, I found that the dream ofliving in another culture had vanished.
Daniel thought about this. His friends said that he would be insane to put his career on hold.But he decided it wasn‘t so crazy. After graduation, he worked as a waiter at college, a bikemessenger and a house painter. With the money he earned, he had enough to go to Paris.
The night before he was to leave, I tossed in bed. I was trying to figure out something to say.Nothing came to mind. Maybe, I thought, it wasn‘t necessary to say anything.
What does it matter in the course of a life-time if a father never tells a son what he really thinksof him? But as I stood before Daniel, I knew that it does matter. My father and I loved eachother. Yet, I always regretted never hearing him put his feelings into words and never havingthe memory of that moment. Now, I could feel my palms sweat and my throat tighten. Why isit so hard to tell a son something from the heart? My mouth turned dry, and I knew I would beable to get out only a few words clearly.
“Daniel," I said, "if I could have picked, I would have picked you."
That‘s all I could say. I wasn‘t sure he understood what I meant. Then he came toward me andthrew his arms around me. For a moment, the world and all its people vanished, and there wasjust Daniel and me in our home by the sea.
He was saying something, but my eyes misted over, and I couldn‘t understand what he wassaying. All I was aware of was the stubble on his chin as his face pressed against mine. Andthen, the moment ended. I went to work, and Daniel left a few hours later with his girlfriend.
That was seven weeks ago, and I think about him when I walk along the beach on weekends.Thousands of miles away, somewhere out past the ocean waves breaking on the desertedshore, he might be scurrying across Boulevard Saint Germain, strolling through a mustyhallway of the Louvre, bending an elbow in a Left Bank café.
What I had said to Daniel was clumsy and trite. It was nothing. And yet, it was everything.