一名準“空巢”父親的感慨
The empty-nest syndrome was going to be the subject of this column. Over the weekend, we dropped off our younger daughter, Gracie, at Kenyon College in Ohio, the same school her sister Lucy attended. According to conventional wisdom, we would be returning to an empty apartment and to lives as dramatically changed as Gracie's, though possibly not for the better.
My recollection is that the empty nest wasn't as big a deal when I left home for college. Part of the reason was that my parents had my three younger brothers to assuage them. I don't think that's the whole explanation, though. Theirs was more of a stiff-upper-lip generation. Also, there was less of a fetish about children in those days. We were their kids, their flesh and blood, but we weren't also their companions or best friends─or works of art that they'd spent their best years sculpting.
在我的記憶中，當年我上大學的時候，“空巢”對我的父母來說並不是一件大不了的事情。這一部分是因爲我還有三個弟弟能夠滿足他們的情感需求，但我認爲這並不是完全的解釋。他們屬於感情更堅毅的一代人，而且那時候人們也沒那麼依戀自己的孩子。的確，我們是他們的孩子、他們的親骨肉，但是並算不上他們的伴侶或是最好的朋友，也算不上他們要耗費自己的最好年華來雕琢的藝術品。But I've decided not to write about being an empty nester; to do so would be premature. Life might turn out to be a hollow shell without our children at home. On the other hand, having an extra bedroom may serve as partial compensation. My wife and I may discover that we no longer get along, that our kids were the Duco Cement that kept our marriage together.
但是，我決定不寫關於作爲“空巢父母”的內容，因爲現在寫這些東西還爲時過早。家裏沒有孩子的話，生活可能會被證明是一個空殼，另一方面，富餘一個臥室部分程度上可能會成爲一個補償。我和妻子可能會發現我們不再和睦相處、孩子是維繫我們婚姻的粘合劑。
I don't anticipate that, though there may be some pressure on me to raise my game. We made each other laugh before we had children and still seem capable of doing so.
我預計這一點不會發生，儘管應對這一切對我來說可能會有一些壓力。在沒有孩子之前，我和妻子常常會逗得對方大笑，現在我們似乎依然能夠這麼做。I almost forgot to mention that my older daughter is still living at home. She hopes to leave as soon as possible but the apartment she wanted in Brooklyn fell through at the last minute over the summer, so she's back in her bedroom. Until she moves out we can't officially claim empty-nestership. 對了，我差點兒忘了說，我的大女兒還住在家裏。她本人希望儘早搬出去住，但是在今年夏天，她想租下的布魯克林的那套公寓在最後一刻落空，於是她回到了家住。在她沒有搬出去之前，我們也不能正式宣稱自己是空巢父母了。
Thus, I've decided to write on a different and altogether more uplifting topic: freshman week. That phenomenon is different than it was in my era, if only because my daughter seemed to recognize many of her fellow freshmen when she arrived, from the photos and messages they posted over the months on the Facebook group page for incoming Kenyon students. Freshman week now effectively starts the previous winter, when the first early-decision candidates are accepted and the Facebook page goes up.因此，我決定寫一個不同的、總的來說更加讓人振奮的話題──新生入學周。如今的情況已與我讀大學時的那個年代不同，僅僅是女兒在入校時認出了許多同爲新生的同學這一點便能說明問題，幾個月來這些人在凱尼恩學院的Facebook新生羣組頁面上發佈了不少照片和消息。現在，新生周實際上早在開學的前一個冬季便已開始，當時第一批早就做出決定的申請學生被學校錄取，隨後便創建了Facebook新生羣組頁面。
Nonetheless, the fundamentals of freshman week remain the same as always: You're being plucked from your family and friends and thrown into a social cauldron, an experience simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. Your senses are on edge, even though you may be too numb to realize it. Every experience you have, every stranger you meet, has the potential of becoming a lifelong friend or memory.然而，新生入學周的本質一直都未曾改變──你突然要離開家人和朋友，被扔進了社會大熔爐中，這種經歷既讓人興奮又讓人感到恐懼。你的精神緊張不安，儘管你自己可能都沒有意識到這一點。你的每一段經歷、遇見的每一個陌生人都有可能成爲你一生的記憶或朋友。
I've tried and failed over the years to describe, if only to my own satisfaction, the singularity of college and of the college social experiment. In some ways, I never felt as free, open and alive as when I was in college.多年來，我曾試着去描述大學生活的獨特性以及大學校園中的社會磨練，但即便是我自己看來也不滿意。在某些方面，我再也不能像在大學時那樣覺得自由、開放和充滿活力。
If nothing else, you'll never have a better opportunity to invent yourself, even from scratch, amid a relatively captive audience. My hunch is that if the years up to age 2 are those of greatest brain development, 18 to 22 or 23 aren't far behind.撇開其他不說，你永遠都不會有一個比在大學時更好的機會來在一羣比較專注的關注者中塑造你自己，甚至是從頭開始塑造你自己。我的直覺是，如果說出生到兩歲的這段時間是大腦發育最重要的時期，那麼18歲至22或23歲的這段時期的重要性也不會相差太遠。
Gracie moved into her room Saturday afternoon and seems already to have bonded with her roommate, Anna. They appear to share a sense of order and aesthetics. My freshman roommate, on the other hand, was a lovely guy until he decided to open a deli in our dorm room. I had nothing against him trying to supplement his allowance. It just became hard to sleep at night with all the stoners barging in to raid the refrigerator. Fortunately, he went out of business within a couple of weeks.格蕾西在週六下午搬進了寢室，似乎已經與她的室友安娜(Anna)結成了良好關係。她們似乎擁有相同的條理性和審美觀。我當年剛進大學時的室友人挺不錯，但是後來他決定在我們的寢室開一家熟食店。我毫不反對他嘗試貼補自己的零用錢，只是那些吸食了大麻的人大晚上闖進寢室大肆翻找冰箱的聲響實在是讓我難以入睡。幸運的是，他在幾個星期內就停業了。
The opposite sex also promised to be a key component of my freshman week─and year─experience, proof that after 13 years at an all-boys school I was about to be ushered into paradise. My confident assumption was that I'd have a girlfriend, perhaps multiple girlfriends, within days if not hours. I recall limping back to my dorm somewhere around the two-week mark, celibate and lonely and having given up all hope of romance. By the time an attractive female freshman took an interest in me a couple of months later, I was so beaten down that she pretty much had to spell it out for me.異性也有希望成爲我入學第一週甚至是第一年的經歷的重要部分，成爲我在讀了13年男校之後即將被帶入天堂的證據。我自信地以爲我將在幾天內（如果不是幾小時之內的話）找到一個女朋友，甚至可能是幾個女朋友。我還記得，大概過了兩個星期左右的時間，我有氣無力地走回寢室，依舊是孑然一人、孤孤單單，而且已經放棄了所有對浪漫戀情的希望。幾個月後，當一個迷人的新生女生對我表現出有點意思時，我已經變得非常低落，她不得不親口向我表白。
The biggest misconception about college, I suspect, is that while you think of yourself as insecure and often lonely, you view everybody else as self-confident and already fully fledged adults. You later learn that wasn't true. Much of the energy of those years came from being part of a communal process of discovery. At 18, you were all innocents at heart. Cynicism had few places to hide. 我個人認爲，對大學生活最大的一個誤解是，你會覺得自己沒有安全感而且常常很孤獨，同時還認爲其他人都滿懷自信，已經成爲完全成熟的成年人。後來，你瞭解到事實並非如此，成爲共同探索過程的一份子賦予了你在那些年的大部分精力。在18歲這個年紀，你在內心裏就是一個非常純真的人，憤世嫉俗的情緒幾乎無處可藏。I skipped the parents' orientation meeting with the faculty and staff, having attended my older daughter's. But my wife, who did go, reported that it was filled with sage advice such as this: You won't help your child's transition to adulthood if he or she returns home at Thanksgiving only to discover that you've turned his or her bedroom into a man cave or crafts room.
我曾經參加過大女兒入學時與教職人員見面的介紹會，但是這一次我缺席了小女兒的介紹會。妻子在參加完介紹會後向我說道，會上有很多明智的建議，比如說你的孩子要是在回家過感恩節時發現你把他/她的臥室改造成了一個男人專屬空間或是手工藝室，他/她並不會就因此成長爲成年人。Brunch was at Peirce, the college's spectacular new dining hall─the beautification of the nation's colleges is another difference from my era─and then it was on to convocation and a meeting with Howard Sacks, the head of Kenyon's sociology department, as well as a sheep farmer, a national leader of the sustainable-agriculture movement and Gracie's adviser.
我們在凱尼恩學院美輪美奐的新餐廳Peirce吃了早午餐，美國高校變得更美了，這又是一個與我們那個年代不同的地方。隨後我們參加了集會，並且與凱尼恩學院社會學系的系主任霍華德•薩克斯(Howard Sacks)會面，──他同時還是一個牧羊人，是可持續農業發展運動全美領袖，也是格蕾西的指導老師。After a brief, tearful goodbye, we hit the road filled with an ineffable sadness that only started to dissipate after we crossed the Pennsylvania border a couple of hours later.
在眼淚汪汪地做了簡短的告別之後，我們就開着車上路了，車內瀰漫着一種無可言喻的悲傷氣氛。幾個小時過後，在我們穿過賓夕法尼亞州的邊界之後，這種氣氛纔開始消散。My wife's sadness was primal. Not that I'm suggesting mine wasn't, but there may have also been a touch of envy. My best years may or may not be behind me. Gracie's are just getting started.
妻子的難過情緒是發自內心的，我這麼說並不是說我就不是真心難過，而是說我的內心或許還夾雜着一絲妒忌情緒。我最好的年華或許已經過去，或許還沒消逝，但是格蕾西的纔剛剛開始。
