|
How does it feel to be the mother of a teenage dwarf who’s desperate to start dating? What if you love the daughter you conceived when you were raped but can’t bear to be touched by her? And, as the father of a happy, yet profoundly deaf son who’s forgotten how it feels to hear, how do you deal with your memories of the times you played music together?
This is a passionate and affecting work that will shake up your preconceptions and leave you in a better place. It’s a book everyone should read and, although everyone won’t (at a hefty 700 pages of text, with more than 100 pages of notes, it’s no pocket guide), there’s no one who wouldn’t be a more imaginative and understanding parent — or human being — for having done so. 这本书充满激情、感人至深，它会动摇你的先入之见，让你更加睿智。每个人都应该读一读这本书，虽然并不是每个人都能做到（这本厚重的书有700页正文和超过100页的注释，它可不是口袋指南书）；看完这本书的父母（或者普通人），都会变得更有想象力、更能理解别人。 As a psycho-sociological study, it’s important and unrivaled; no one has ever collated this amount of evidence before. And even though the book might have benefited from occasional tightening, it still makes for breathtaking reading — a vivid and gripping account of who we are right now, and what exactly happens when we try to make more of ourselves. 作为一本心理学兼社会学专著，这本书很重要，而且无与伦比；从来没有人整理过如此大量的资料。虽然在个别地方还可以写得再紧凑一点，但是总体来说，这是一本令人惊叹的书——它生动而扣人心弦地讲述了我们此刻是什么样的人，当我们努力想做到更多事情时，到底会发生什么。 “There is no such thing as reproduction,” Solomon points out on the first page, only acts of “production.” And despite the fact that we never know quite what — or whom — we’ll produce, it’s one of the least bitter truths of human existence that, regardless of what pain and anguish they put us through, we never ever regret our children. “It is not suffering that is precious,” he notes when recalling the depths of his depression, “but the concentric pearlescence with which we contain it.” 索罗门在第一页中指出，“没有复制这回事”，只有“创造”。尽管我们永远都不知道自己会创造出什么或者什么人，但是人生最不苦涩的真理之一就是：不管孩子给我们带来多大的痛苦，我们永远都不会后悔生养了他们。他回忆起自己的抑郁症时，这样说道：“珍贵的并不是苦难本身，而是我们对苦难如同珍珠般的包容。” More than anything, “Far From the Tree” is a book about precisely that containment. Throughout, Solomon proves a calm and likable guide — open, curious, nonjudgmental, not too politically correct and also possessed of a sense of humor and honesty, which, you imagine, endeared him to his subjects. If he has expectations and prejudices — “My assumption about deafness was that it was a deficit and nothing more” — he is only too willing to have them demolished. After all, as he explains here with bracing frankness, he too knows about the humiliations involved in the search for (in his case, sexual) identity. He knows what it is to feel like a freak. 而《那些与众不同的孩子》这本书，讲的正是这种包容。从头到尾，索罗门都是用平静、可亲的态度进行指引——开放、好奇，不带偏见，不刻意注重政治正确，还带着幽默感和真诚，可想而知，这些让他的采访对象更愿意跟他亲近。如果说他也带有一些预期和偏见，比如“我之前对耳聋的看法就是那是一种不足，没有别的”，那他非常希望消除这些想法。毕竟，就像他在书中用惊人的坦诚解释的那样，他也知道在确定自己的“身份”（他个人确定的是“性身份”）时有多么羞辱。他知道感觉自己是怪人是什么滋味。 But it’s the other voices — the frequently shocking missives from the front line of human existence — that elevate this book from clinical documentary into something more eerie and emotionally resonant. The mother who realizes that her teenage son has sexually abused his young cousin; the dwarf who says forlornly, “We never leaned over in a movie and gently let a hand fall onto a breast . . . our arms aren’t long enough”; another dwarf who explains that, because he looks at people below the waist all day, “my idea of intimacy is the special occasion of looking someone in the face”; the despairing father who lets slip, when taking a birthday cake to his severely autistic 10-year-old in a residential home, “I don’t know who we’re doing this for”; the Rwandan mother of a child conceived in rape, who begs Solomon, “Can you tell me how to love my daughter more?” 然而是书中的其他声音——那些来自人生第一线的频频令人震惊的消息——让这本书从临床记录，上升为更惊人的、在情感上更让人共鸣的著作。一位母亲发现她十几岁的儿子对他的小表妹进行了性虐待；一位侏儒可怜地说：“在电影中，我们从来都不曾俯身下去，轻轻地让手落在一个乳房上……我们的胳膊不够长”；另一位侏儒说，因为每天都只能看到别人的腰部以下，所以“我对亲密的理解就是在某些特殊场合，可以看到对方的脸”；一位绝望的父亲无意中透露，当去宿舍给他十岁大的患有严重孤独症的儿子送生日蛋糕的时候，“我都不知道我们这样做是为了谁”；卢旺达的一位妇女因为被强奸而怀上了女儿，她恳求索罗门：“你能告诉我怎样才能让我更爱女儿吗？” There is mystery here, as well as desperation. The autistic child who has spoken only four times in her life (each instance with words “appropriate to the situation”) makes her mother worry that “her soul is trapped.” Solomon is quick to point out: “To have a child totally incapable of language is distressing but straightforward, but to have a child who has spoken four times is to labor in terrifying murkiness.” 除了令人绝望的事，书中也提到一些神秘事件。有一位孤独症儿童长这么大只说过四次话（每次说的话都跟“当时的情景非常契合”），这让她的妈妈担心“她的灵魂被困住了”。索罗门随即指出：“有一个完全不说话的孩子是非常痛苦，不过这还可以理解；但是有一个只说过四次话的孩子，会让人因为迷惑而感到恐惧。” But there can be wry laughter and tenderness in the murkiness. The young schizophrenic adored by his nephews and nieces who regard him as “his own particular strong essence.” The baffled mother of a child prodigy confesses her confusion to Solomon. “He just understands all things,” she says of her son, who became curious about the theory of relativity at the age of 3 and entered college at 9. “Someday, I want to work with parents of disabled children, because I know their bewilderment is like mine.” 但是在迷惑之中，也有苦笑和温柔。有一位年轻的精神分裂症患者得到了侄子和侄女们的崇拜，他们觉得他“拥有他自己独特而强大的本质”。有一位母亲，她的儿子是个奇才，三岁就对相对论很感兴趣，九岁就上了大学。这位母亲向索罗门道出了自己的困惑：“他就是什么都懂，”“我希望有一天能跟残障儿童的父母们一起谈谈，因为我知道他们和我一样困惑。” Infinitely touching too are the stories of the marriages that survive — or crumble — under the weight of so much care-taking. “What we have left, as us,” a mother of two severely autistic children reveals, “is much less than when we got married.” Or, “I was a lot more frivolous before I was dragged kicking and screaming into the world of mental illness,” a mother of a schizophrenic says with a sigh. 同样非常感人的还有那些在监护责任的重压之下挺过来的或者破裂的婚姻。有一位母亲，她的两个孩子都患有严重的孤独症；她透露说：“现在我们之间的感情，跟刚结婚那时候相比，淡了很多。”还有一位母亲有个精神分裂症的孩子，她叹息道：“在我踢着腿、尖叫着被拖入精神病人的世界之前，我比现在要孩子气得多。” Solomon is able to appreciate the singular gifts of many “horizontal identities” — the “extreme sweetness of many Down syndrome children,” say, or the richness and pride of deaf culture. It’s only schizophrenia that he describes as pure “unrewarding trauma.” The suffering of schizophrenics and their families, he writes, “seemed unending, and singularly fruitless.” 索罗门能够欣赏到很多“平行身份”具有的独特优势，比如“很多唐氏儿特别可爱”；聋人文化非常丰富，而且他们为此感到自豪。只有精神分裂症被他描述为纯粹的“没有任何回报的创伤”。他写道，精神分裂症患者和他们的家人所经受的折磨，“似乎是无休无止的，特别让人觉得徒劳”。 This is the book’s central conundrum: most of the families he describes are deeply grateful for the very experiences they would have sacrificed everything to avoid. We can’t help loving our children for who they are, not who they might have been. So, a mother whose second son was born as profoundly disabled as her first admits that if she had known the condition might have been repeated she “would not have risked it.” But she immediately contradicts herself by saying if she had the chance to “wipe out that experience,” she certainly wouldn’t have. Solomon declares, “Difference unites us.” But how much difference is too much? It’s a question that neither he nor this work ever manages to answer. But you sense that somewhere in that very uncertainty lies a startlingly accurate definition of parental love. Of the Rwandan rape victim who begged him to help her love her daughter more, Solomon observes, “She did not know how much love was in that question itself.” 这本书最大的谜题是：大多数家庭愿意不惜一切代价来避免这样的遭遇，同时他们也深深地为这些遭遇而感恩。我们情不自禁地爱自己的孩子，爱他们现在的样子，而不是假象中的样子。有一位母亲，她的第二个儿子和第一个一样，患有严重残疾；她承认，如果当时她知道第二个孩子也会这样，她“不会冒险尝试的”。但是她很快又自相矛盾地说，如果她有机会“抹掉这个经历”，她肯定不会选择抹掉。索罗门断言，“差别让我们团结在一起。”但是多大的差别是我们能够接受的？他和这本书都没有能够回答这个问题。但是你感觉，正是这种“不确定性”，准确地阐释了父母之爱的定义。索罗门注意到，卢旺达那位被强奸的妇女在请求他帮助自己更爱女儿的时候，“她不知道这个问题本身就包含着她深深的爱”。 The book’s final chapter tells of Solomon’s own journey through marriage to his partner, John, and on into parenthood. It contains a spark of real surprise, and it’s probably testament to the warmth and kindness with which he’s explored the stories of so many others that you find yourself catching your breath, suddenly apprehensive for him, as his life appears poised to come undone. To reveal more would spoil something, but suffice it to say that you end this journey through difference and diversity with an even stronger conviction that life is endlessly, heart-stoppingly, fragile and unknowable. 本书的最后一章讲述了索罗门自己的经历，从他与伴侣约翰结婚到成为父亲，其中闪烁着真正的意外光辉，而这恰恰证明他是怀着温暖和友善在探寻那么多其他人的故事；当你看着他的人生好像要土崩瓦解的时候，你发现自己屏住了呼吸，突然为他感到担心。我透露太多可能会毁了你阅读的乐趣，但是我可以说，你在结束这场关于差别和差异的旅程时，你会更加坚定地确信：生命让人心碎地脆弱，且带着无穷无尽的不可知。 And yet. Spending time with the parents of a child so disabled he has to be lifted from his bed with a pulley, Solomon notes that to be in the room with them and their son “is to witness a shimmering humanity.” It’s a phrase that should be smoke-trailed across the sky, or at the very least stuck on the family fridge. It’s also a very accurate description of what he’s achieved in this wise and beautiful book. 然而生命还有另一面。有一个孩子有严重的残疾，只有靠滑轮才能把他从床上摇起来；索罗门说和这个孩子以及他的父母在一起时，他“见证了人性的光辉”。这句话应该用喷气式飞机喷在天空上，或者至少粘在家里的冰箱上。这句话也准确地描述了索罗门在这本睿智而美丽的书中所实现的价值。 本文作者Julie Myerson写过八本小说和三部非虚构类图书，包括《迷路的孩子》(The Lost Child)。 本文最初发表于2012年11月25日。 翻译：王艳 |
|
