2024年4月13日发(作者：)

The Swing

By Mary Gavell

As she grew old, she began to dream again. She had not dreamed

much in her middle years; or, if she had, the busyness of her days,

converging on her the moment she awoke, had pushed her dreams right

out of her head, and any fragments that remained were as busy and

prosaic as the day itself. She had only the one son, James, but she had also

mothered her younger sister after their parents died, and she had done

all of the office work during the years when her husband’s small

engineering firm was getting on its feet. And Julius’s health had not been

too good, even then; it was she who had mowed the lawn and had helped

Jamie to learn to ride his bicycle and pitched balls to him in the backyard

until he learned to hit them.

随着年龄的增长，她又开始做梦了。她在中年时很少做梦;或者，

如果她有的话，她白天的忙碌在她醒来的那一刻向她涌来，把她的

梦想从她的头脑中赶走了，剩下的碎片就像白天本身一样忙碌而平

淡。她只有一个儿子詹姆斯，但在父母去世后，她也像母亲一样抚

养了她的妹妹。在她丈夫的小工程公司刚刚成立的那些年里，所有

的办公室工作都是她做的。即使在那时，朱利叶斯的健康状况也不

太好;是她修剪了草坪，帮助杰米学习骑自行车，在后院向他扔球，

直到他学会击球。

But she was dreaming again now, as she had when she was a child.

Oh, not the lovely foolish dreams of finding oneself alone in a candy store,

or the horrible dreams of being pursued through endless corridors

without doors by nameless terrors. But as her days grew in quietness and

solitude – for James was grown and gone, and Julius was drawing in upon

himself, becoming every day more small and chill and dim – color and life

and drama were returning to her dreams.

但是她现在又在做梦了，就像她小时候那样。哦，不要做那些

发现自己独自在糖果店里的可爱愚蠢的梦，也不要做那些在没有门

的无尽走廊里被无名的恐怖追逐的可怕的梦。但是，随着她的日子

在安静和孤独中度过——因为詹姆斯已长大成人，离世了，朱利叶

斯也在自生自养，变得一天比一天渺小、寒冷和暗淡——色彩和生

活和戏剧性又回到了她的梦里。

But on that first night when she heard the creak of the swing, she did

not think that she was dreaming at all. She had been lying in bed quite

awake, she thought, in the little room that used to be Jamie’s – for

nowadays her reading in bed, and afterward her tossing and turning,

disturbed Julius. The swing was not an ordinary one. Julius had put it up,

in one of the few flashes of poetry in all his worrisome, hardworking life,

when Jamie was only a baby and nowhere near old enough to swing in it.

The ladder Julius had was not tall enough, and he had to buy a new one,

for the tree was tremendous and the branch on which he proposed to

hang the swing arched a full forty feet from the ground, and much thought

and consideration and care were given to the chain, and the hooks, and

the seat. The swing was suspended from so high, and its arc was so wide,

that riding in it was like sailing through the air with the leisurely swoop of

a wheeling bird. One seemed to travel from one horizon to the other. And

how proud Julius had been of it when Jamie was old enough to swing in it,

and the neighborhood children had stood around to admire and be given

a turn, for there was no other swing like it.