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主题: 小说：游行之后

其一：
After finishing an interesting, albeit somewhat sad, novel by Lori Ostlund called After the Parade, all I can think about is the spotlight it put on my mother’s big secret.
《游行之后》是Lori Ostlund写的一本有趣但是又有些许悲哀的小说，在我读完它之后，我脑海中浮现的只有妈妈大秘密上的聚光灯。（？又在说什么外星语）

Abbey Rhodes

Aaron, the central character, grew up with just his mom in a small Minnesota town, after his father, a cop, fell off the police parade float and died when Aaron was seven. Thus, the title.
核心人物叫做Aaron，他和他的妈妈生活在明尼苏达州的一个小镇。Aaron七岁时，他的警察爸爸，从警察游行花车上摔下来死亡了。正如书名。

Dolores runs a café, living upstairs with her son. When Aaron is 17, he wakes up one morning to discover that his mother is gone. She leaves no explanation. Aaron does not see her again for twenty-five years.
Dolores经营了一家咖啡店，和她的儿子住在二楼。当Aaron十七岁时，某天早上醒来，发现妈妈离开了。没有任何预兆。之后的25年Aaron再也没有见过妈妈。

We learn all this in Aaron’s lengthy flashbacks to his childhood, while he’s in the process of re-establishing his life in San Francisco. After over twenty years with him, he has just left Walter, the man who saved him, put him through college and became his lover.
这是Aaron关于童年的漫长回忆里讲述的故事，现在他已经在旧金山重建他的家庭了。二十年后，拯救了他，并让他读完大学，成为他的情人的沃尔特，刚刚与Aaron分离。

After the Parade is filled with contemplation of how we grow up, how we try to move on from the places, incidents and people who’ve wounded us. I was struck so profoundly by one of Ostlund’s comments that it is all I can think about after finishing the book. Her insight helped heal an old wound.
读完这本书，我的理解是，它是关于我们如何长大，我们如何从伤害我们的人或事中走出来的一本书。奥斯特伦德的一句话深深地打动了我，这是我读完这本书后所能想到的。她的洞察力帮助治愈了一个旧伤口。

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回复: 小说：游行之后

其二：
It's been twelve years since my mother died. While my grief has long been emptied out, I’ve been unable to fully process the big secret she left me to discover in her journals.
这已经是我妈妈死后的第二十年了，我的悲痛也早已平淡了，我一直无法完全处理她留给我在她的日记中发现的大秘密。

Married to my father for sixty years, she raised eight kids. Part of the post-WWII generation that, through hard work and white privilege, rose from near-poverty-level existence into the American middleclass, she ran a bakery while my father put in long hours on an assembly line.
嫁给我爸爸的60年里，她养了8个孩子。二战后的那个年代，在艰苦工作和白人特权盛行的条件下，她把这个家庭从接近贫困水平，发展到美国中产阶级水平，她经营一家面包房，我的爸爸则在配件流水线工作。

She was a devoted Catholic, sang in the choir, did volunteer work and knew just about everyone there was to know in the small town where we grew up.
她是个虔诚色天主教徒，她会在教堂祷告，做志愿工作，她认识我们长大的小镇上几乎所有人。

After she died, I discovered a box filled with her journals, dozens of them. I was not surprised to learn how much she hated my father.
在她死后，我发现了一个装满她的珠宝的盒子。我这才知道，她是多么憎恨我的父亲。

I knew it was always a contorted love/hate relationship. In public, she acted proud of him, prouder still of the big happy family they’d raised. In private, in her journals, she cursed him nearly every day.
我知道那是一种扭曲的爱恨交织的情感。表面上，母亲装作以父亲为骄傲的样子，以养育出如此大的家庭而自豪。私下里，在母亲的日记本中，她却每天咒骂父亲。

In every journal, alongside diatribes about her husband, she reveled in what she called her ‘big secret’, wondering what people would think ‘if they only knew.’ For thirty years, right up to the last year of her life, she carried on a torrid love affair with a man named Frank, an old family friend.
在每一天的日记中，关于她的丈夫，只有无休止的指责，母亲把这个‘最大的秘密’深深埋藏起来，想知道如果人们知道了这件事会怎样想。30年来，直到她生命的最后一年，她都与一个叫弗兰克的，来自旧家庭的老朋友，陷入深深的热恋。

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回复: 小说：游行之后

其三：
She wrote about much she loved Frank, how beautiful and desirable he made her feel. She savored the details of their carefully plotted hook-ups at out-of-the-way motels whenever he was passing through town.
她写了很多关于多么爱弗兰克，弗兰克多么让她感到开心和向往爱情的日记。当他途经城镇，她都会细细品味他们在汽车旅馆欢好的细节。

She wrote fevered words about of how impatient he was to get her into bed, even after her mastectomy when she was well into her seventies.
她用色情的文字记录，即便是她已经在70岁后做了乳房切除手术，他也是那么急不可耐地把她压倒在床上。

Though it made me somewhat uncomfortable, as is usually the case with the sex lives of our parents, it was made easier by my background as a sex counselor.
虽然这些文字让我感到些不适，但这确实是我们父母性生活中的一环，而我作为一个性爱咨询师，就更加容易接受了。

I was, however, deeply troubled by her duplicity. I thought I was close to my mom. I even thought I was her confidante. She reached out to me when one of my many siblings was in trouble and when she couldn’t deal with my father’s latest ‘bullheadedness.’
当然，我被她的这种口是心非深感厌烦。我自认为对妈妈很亲近。我甚至以为我是她的知己。当我有兄弟姐妹陷入困境，当她无法处理我父亲的顽固不化，她总是向我求助。

Ostlund seized on an explanation for my mother’s behavior that I had never considered.
Ostlund抓住了我的母亲某种行为的原因，这连我也没有注意到。

Wanting to believe that his mother didn’t run away from him specifically, Aaron decided that she fled because she needed to become someone else.
Aaron努力相信他的妈妈并不是故意离开他，他告诉自己妈妈离开是因为她需要成为找到不同的自己。

She needed to quit fitting into the mold of being who she was in that small town where everyone knew her story, knew about her husband’s death falling off a parade float, knew her to make a good meatloaf special on Wednesdays and the fish fry special on Fridays, knew that her whole life was centered around raising her son.
这是个每个人都知道她的小镇，知道她的丈夫在游行船上掉落死去，知道她在周三会做好吃且特别的肉排，知道她在周五会煎鱼，知道她所做的一切，都是为了将几个儿子养大，这段如同模具般将她牢牢卡住的生活，她想要摒弃这一切。

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回复: 小说：游行之后

其四：
“Once people thought they knew you,” Ostlund writes, “it was impossible to change their minds, which meant that it was almost impossible to change yourself.”
Ostlund写道：人们一旦认为他们了解你，那么想要改变他们的想法就几乎不可能了，换种说法，想要改变你自己也几乎不可能。

It reminded me of how claustrophobic small towns can be, everyone knowing everyone’s business and everyone stereotyped into who they were and who they were expected to be.
这让我回想起，小镇的封闭思想会有多可怕，每个人都知道任何其他一个人的事业，每个人都刻板印象于他们是谁以及他们应该成为谁。

I realized that more than anything else, more than the sex or romance, Mom’s secret affair with Frank gave her the opportunity to step outside herself.
我意识到，超乎爱情，超乎性，超乎任何事，妈妈和弗兰克的秘密情事给了她走出旧的自己的良机。

For a few hours when she was with Frank, she got to quit being Mrs. Albert Rhodes, the hardworking mother-of-eight, the good Catholic who sang in the choir. Frank liberated her from the life that she felt somewhat trapped in.
母亲和弗兰克相处数个小时后，她放弃了阿尔伯特·罗德斯夫人的身份，放弃了八个孩子的妈妈的身份，放弃了教堂里以天主教徒唱着祷告词的身份。弗兰克把她从困住她的泥沼中解救了。

She didn’t run away like Aaron’s mom did, though I’m sure she fantasized about it with Frank. My mom found a way to run away without leaving us. I love her all the more for realizing that.
她并没有像Aaron的妈妈那样逃走，不过气很确信她和弗兰克幻想过那样。我的妈妈找到了不离开我们而生活下去的方法。在认识到这些事后，我更爱我的妈妈了。

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