一名准“空巢”父亲的感慨
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.
在我的记忆中，当年我上大学的时候，“空巢”对我的父母来说并不是一件大不了的事情。这一部分是因为我还有三个弟弟能够满足他们的情感需求，但我认为这并不是完全的解释。他们属于感情更坚毅的一代人，而且那时候人们也没那么依恋自己的孩子。的确，我们是他们的孩子、他们的亲骨肉，但是并算不上他们的伴侣或是最好的朋友，也算不上他们要耗费自己的最好年华来雕琢的艺术品。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，我决定不写关于作为“空巢父母”的内容，因为现在写这些东西还为时过早。家里没有孩子的话，生活可能会被证明是一个空壳，另一方面，富余一个卧室部分程度上可能会成为一个补偿。我和妻子可能会发现我们不再和睦相处、孩子是维系我们婚姻的粘合剂。
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.
我预计这一点不会发生，尽管应对这一切对我来说可能会有一些压力。在没有孩子之前，我和妻子常常会逗得对方大笑，现在我们似乎依然能够这么做。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. 对了，我差点儿忘了说，我的大女儿还住在家里。她本人希望尽早搬出去住，但是在今年夏天，她想租下的布鲁克林的那套公寓在最后一刻落空，于是她回到了家住。在她没有搬出去之前，我们也不能正式宣称自己是空巢父母了。
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，我决定写一个不同的、总的来说更加让人振奋的话题──新生入学周。如今的情况已与我读大学时的那个年代不同，仅仅是女儿在入校时认出了许多同为新生的同学这一点便能说明问题，几个月来这些人在凯尼恩学院的Facebook新生群组页面上发布了不少照片和消息。现在，新生周实际上早在开学的前一个冬季便已开始，当时第一批早就做出决定的申请学生被学校录取，随后便创建了Facebook新生群组页面。
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，新生入学周的本质一直都未曾改变──你突然要离开家人和朋友，被扔进了社会大熔炉中，这种经历既让人兴奋又让人感到恐惧。你的精神紧张不安，尽管你自己可能都没有意识到这一点。你的每一段经历、遇见的每一个陌生人都有可能成为你一生的记忆或朋友。
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.多年来，我曾试着去描述大学生活的独特性以及大学校园中的社会磨练，但即便是我自己看来也不满意。在某些方面，我再也不能像在大学时那样觉得自由、开放和充满活力。
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.撇开其他不说，你永远都不会有一个比在大学时更好的机会来在一群比较专注的关注者中塑造你自己，甚至是从头开始塑造你自己。我的直觉是，如果说出生到两岁的这段时间是大脑发育最重要的时期，那么18岁至22或23岁的这段时期的重要性也不会相差太远。
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.格蕾西在周六下午搬进了寝室，似乎已经与她的室友安娜(Anna)结成了良好关系。她们似乎拥有相同的条理性和审美观。我当年刚进大学时的室友人挺不错，但是后来他决定在我们的寝室开一家熟食店。我毫不反对他尝试贴补自己的零用钱，只是那些吸食了大麻的人大晚上闯进寝室大肆翻找冰箱的声响实在是让我难以入睡。幸运的是，他在几个星期内就停业了。
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.异性也有希望成为我入学第一周甚至是第一年的经历的重要部分，成为我在读了13年男校之后即将被带入天堂的证据。我自信地以为我将在几天内（如果不是几小时之内的话）找到一个女朋友，甚至可能是几个女朋友。我还记得，大概过了两个星期左右的时间，我有气无力地走回寝室，依旧是孑然一人、孤孤单单，而且已经放弃了所有对浪漫恋情的希望。几个月后，当一个迷人的新生女生对我表现出有点意思时，我已经变得非常低落，她不得不亲口向我表白。
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. 我个人认为，对大学生活最大的一个误解是，你会觉得自己没有安全感而且常常很孤独，同时还认为其他人都满怀自信，已经成为完全成熟的成年人。后来，你了解到事实并非如此，成为共同探索过程的一份子赋予了你在那些年的大部分精力。在18岁这个年纪，你在内心里就是一个非常纯真的人，愤世嫉俗的情绪几乎无处可藏。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.
我曾经参加过大女儿入学时与教职人员见面的介绍会，但是这一次我缺席了小女儿的介绍会。妻子在参加完介绍会后向我说道，会上有很多明智的建议，比如说你的孩子要是在回家过感恩节时发现你把他/她的卧室改造成了一个男人专属空间或是手工艺室，他/她并不会就因此成长为成年人。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.
我们在凯尼恩学院美轮美奂的新餐厅Peirce吃了早午餐，美国高校变得更美了，这又是一个与我们那个年代不同的地方。随后我们参加了集会，并且与凯尼恩学院社会学系的系主任霍华德•萨克斯(Howard Sacks)会面，──他同时还是一个牧羊人，是可持续农业发展运动全美领袖，也是格蕾西的指导老师。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.
在眼泪汪汪地做了简短的告别之后，我们就开着车上路了，车内弥漫着一种无可言喻的悲伤气氛。几个小时过后，在我们穿过宾夕法尼亚州的边界之后，这种气氛才开始消散。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.
妻子的难过情绪是发自内心的，我这么说并不是说我就不是真心难过，而是说我的内心或许还夹杂着一丝妒忌情绪。我最好的年华或许已经过去，或许还没消逝，但是格蕾西的才刚刚开始。
