我和爷爷 （英文）

儿子很小的时候曾和祖父母一起生活过一段时间，后来每年回去探望祖父母，祖孙之间感情很深。  为了将来回忆有据，曾于多年前根据儿子的讲述整理出一些文字，下面是其中一部分。

The earliest things I can remember about the world are my grandparents’ little apartment in the 5-storey red brick building: the rickety old furniture lining the impeccably whitewashed walls, the goldfish lounging around in their tank, the two little turtles clumsily patrolling about in the kitchen basin, the seemingly ceaseless choir of birds playing in the cage, flowers of all imaginable colors blossoming on the balcony, grandma's kind nagging and comforting warm hands, and grandpa's magic bedside stories, such as “Alibaba and 40 Thieves”, told in the most soothing voice.

Oh, grandpa doesn't just tell bedside stories; he has a story or some famous Chinese saying for every possible situation.  He enjoyed taking my cousin and me to beautiful gardens on his bicycle.  It was such great fun riding in the only passenger seat on this time-honored means of transportation, the two of us would fight to be the first to get onboard.  That was when we first heard grandpa tell the story about the two little brothers sharing two pears, one big and one small, and each of the brothers wanting the other to have the bigger pear.  We continued to fight over the seat, of course, but now we fought with a sense of guilt.  

Grandpa was born in March of 1925.  That makes him almost 80 years old.  He is of medium height; rail thin, with hair as white as snow.  He is an avid reader.  Having severe myopia and having lost eyesight to glaucoma in one eye have by no means tempered his love for reading.  He'd sit in the only sofa in the living room for hours reading, with the book only an inch from his face.  “Poring over it” is the only way to put it.  His favorite subject is Chinese history.  China has a written history of more than 3,000 years.  Grandpa seems to know each and every of its twists and turns.  Dad often says that grandpa would make a top notch history professor if he had wanted to.  Grandpa, however, doesn't think about teaching.  He says he is just curious.  As curious at age 80 as when he was a school lad in his hometown in China's Hunan Province.

Grandpa also says his painting and calligraphy can benefit from a good knowledge about history.  I still don't quite understand the reasoning of this, but I know grandpa is a darn good painter and calligrapher, with award winning works admired by many.  When grandpa is not reading, he is most likely painting, doing calligraphy or making a kite or something.  At the age of “terrible two”, I had a penchant for making a mess of everything.  So when grandpa did the fun things, he would hide from me by closing the door to his workroom.  Well, I was nobody’s fool: a closed door would always tip me off to grandpa being up to something interesting.  I would bang on the door, and poor grandpa would always relent.  I really enjoyed watching grandpa doing his magic.

Unbeknownst to me then, the calligraphy sessions would lead to Chinese learning sessions for me.  Observing grandpa gracefully maneuvering his writing brush and watching artful Chinese characters leaping off the brush onto rice paper was so mesmerizing I started imitating grandpa and wrote my first Chinese words.  Grandpa was only too happy to see me taking an interest and subtly nudged me toward systematic daily study sessions of Chinese writing.  The two of us would go over simple Chinese literature together, and whenever I came across an unfamiliar character he would copy it down in a little handmade notebook and I would try to learn it by copying it 10 times.  For every 20 new characters I learned, we would have a test whereby grandpa would say the character out loud and I would write it down.  By the time I returned to America, at the age of three, I had already learned some 300 Chinese characters, all carefully recorded in grandpa's beautiful handwriting in that notebook.  When practicing calligraphy, grandpa would not just write meaningless words; he would often put down ancient poems.  As he wrote, he would recite the poems in a singing tone.  The poems, meticulously rhymed, were very catchy, and I soon found myself humming along.  Once my interest was aroused, grandpa would explain the meaning of the poems, and would challenge me to learn them by heart.

Grandpa isn't always busy telling moral stories or teaching Chinese.  He's told me how he, when a little kid, liked swimming a lot, and how his mother would worry about his safety and would chase him out of the pond with a cane.  He really enjoyed doing things with us kids.  We would go out to fly kites or try out model planes, all handmade by him.  I've always felt that grandpa is my best friend, someone I can trust, not just some older person there to keep a watch over me. 

Grandpa has a beautiful voice.  Before his retirement, his colleagues never failed to invite him to sing at workplace parties.  He was the happiest when I first started singing.  Truth is, I've never been able to carry a tune.  But he couldn't care less.  There was this song that I liked most.  It went:

Under the topaz colored sky,

Above the sapphire blue sea;

A little wooden boat with sails white,

Into the sunset is carrying me…

I'd be standing on a stool, singing along with the tape recorder high on the bookshelf.  Grandpa would always stand behind me humming along.  His warm presence seemed to soothe me, liberating me from a young learner's nervousness. We'd do the song again and again, grandfather and grandson, both enjoying a deep peacefulness the tune seemed to impart to us.