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w关键词：grandmother/奶奶、姥姥，seed/种子，cucumber/黄瓜 |
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w目录：Culture/文化 |
w话题：
侨民，思乡 |
w类型：记叙文 |
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w难度级别：
中级 |
w词汇要求：1500 |
w文章词数：500 |
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[ 生 词 可 拖 选 或 双 击 ] |
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Crisp and tender, I have never had a vegetable so
delicious.
又脆又嫩，我从来没吃过这么爽口的蔬菜。 |
Chinese Cucumbers
中国的黄瓜
作者：Amy
S.
[美·波士顿] 来源：www.teenink.com
日期：2008-08-20
责编：Emma
I curiously watched my grandmother open the yellowing paper packet with
painstaking care. When she untied the knots, a cluster of strange, shriveled
off-white orbs fell into her hands. These seeds were all that remained of the
life she had left behind in the Shandong Province of China. As she packed her
possessions to leave that countryside, she had slipped these seeds into her silk
shirt, hoping to grow them in foreign soil. In America, however, the first place
we lived was a tiny apartment building on a busy street, followed by a larger
condo on the thirteenth floor. Five years had passed since my grandmother
arrived in America and it seemed as if she would never be able to plant the
seeds. Still, she kept them safe.
When I was six and about to begin school, my family moved to the first floor of
a three-family house squeezed between a parking lot and another large house.
There was no lawn, only a two and a half foot wide by ten foot long patch of
dirt with a rose bush and knee-high weeds. It was in this house that my
grandmother took out her packet of seeds.
“They won’t grow,” my father said.
“It’s too much work,” my mother said, thinking it would be a waste of time.
As my grandmother listened to their words, she smiled. I watched her place the
seeds in a big bowl of water. As she worked to rid that patch of dirt of its
forest of weeds, I amused myself by watching the shriveled little orbs grow
round and plump in the water.
Each day I would rush home from school to the dirt patch and look for the
vegetables we’d planted. Chinese cucumbers, my grandmother said. I wondered how
they would differ from American cucumbers but didn’t ask what I feared might be
a silly question.
At first there was nothing, and I thought maybe my parents were right, that it
had been too long for the seeds and the life in them had died. Or maybe Chinese
cucumbers couldn’t grow in American soil.
Then one day there was a sprout, then two, then four. My grandmother smiled
again, as a mother who believes in her son smiles when he succeeds. The plants
grew so prolifically that I swore the vines lengthened before my eyes. Every day
I would tell my parents how big the leaves had become and how many bright yellow
flowers had appeared on the vines. When the last of the yellow flowers withered
and fell off, little cucumbers started appearing. Crisp and tender, I have never
had a vegetable so delicious.
Back then, I believed it was the magic power of the cucumber seeds that made
them grow. Even 8,000 miles from home, they bloomed with such intensity and
determination. I vowed to be like the Chinese cucumbers. No matter how far life
takes me from home, I will embrace the world around me and thrive on foreign
soil.
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