不尋常的“禮物”
人生百味
I was 12 years old when my mum finally 1）cajoled my grandmother into buying a one-way ticket to Texas. It was 1994， and my grandmother—an 2）azure-eyed， high-cheeked beauty—was already well into the mid-stages of Alzheimer’s disease. It had been a few months since my family had last seen her and we weren’t sure what to expect. “Do you still have the same 3）plaid suitcases？” My mother asked my grandmother at the airport， as we eyed the 4）baggage carousel. “Oh，” my grandmother said.“I forgot to bring anything！ I guess we’ll have to go shopping.” To conceal our dismay， my parents and I turned back to the whirring 5）conveyor belts， which soon spat out the familiar plaid bags.
A week or so later， we all took a trip to the 6）Dallas Museum of Art. In the museum gift shop， my grandmother bought for me a children’s book about the 7）Rosetta Stone. To my significant disappointment， I saw on the book’s cover that the Rosetta Stone was not the fist-sized jewel I had imagined； it was just a cracked slab of granite with a bunch of ancient scribbling. It might not look like much， my grandmother told me， but this was the key that unlocked the mysteries of ancient Egypt. The Rosetta Stone， I read in that book， had been found only a couple of hundred years ago， and its 8）inscription was just the boasting of some minor Pharaoh from the dying Egyptian empire. And yet， the Stone displayed the same message written in three languages， and it had been the close study of it that made legible the Egyptians’animal-cracker markings， a cipher that unlocked all the great texts written on the stones and scrolls of a long-dead kingdom. A few days later， in return， we gave my grandmother the gift of a 9）leather-bound， 10）gilded journal. My parents and I encouraged her to write down her thoughts and memories in it. We tried to be encouraging， we tried to stay hopeful， but at 2：15am on September 9 of that year， we lost her thoughts and memories forever. My grandmother slipped while wandering through my aunt’s dark house and fell to her death at the base of the basement-black staircase.
Many years passed， I grew up and then I grew older. Yet I also wondered if， in some ways， I was growing backward， into my family’s past. When I was 20—after a five-day， electric bout of insomnia—a doctor gave me the same diagnosis， 11）bipolar disorder， that another doctor had once given my grandfather， just a few years before his early， mysterious death. Then， just as my mum had once 12）fretted over the slips and omissions in my grandmother’s memory， I began to make similarly fretful assessments of my mum. In these， and in many other ways as well， my own future felt bound to my grandmother’s deep and silent history， all the stories that we had also lost when we lost her.