我八岁开始学习钢琴，老师换了一个又一个，钢琴课总是让我欢喜让我忧。63岁时，我终于发现：原来人生可以有更好的选择。

By Judy Pollard Smith

陈子涵 选注

I was eight when I met my first piano teacher. I remember everything about her.

Tuesdays after school I would drag my reluctant little-girl self down the hill toward her brown-brick house by the shoe factory.[1]

Every trudging step took me closer to the doom I knew awaited.[2] Sameness[3] ruled in the piano teacher’s house—let’s call her Mrs. Kaufman. I assumed there was a Mr. Kaufman stuffed away in a corner somewhere, but I never laid eyes on him. The only dress I remember on Mrs. Kaufman matched the colour of the bricks of her house. Her grey hair was pulled back in a chignon so tightly that it stretched the corners of her mouth into a taut blue line.[4]

I’d step into the gloom of the hallway and hang my coat on one of the wooden pegs.[5] She would usher me wordlessly into her sitting room.[6] The heavy damask[7] curtains, I imagined, had never been drawn during the 200 years that I was certain she had lived there with the invisible Mr. Kaufman.

Mrs. Kaufman would begin each lesson with a throat-clearing sound that I roughly translated into “take your seat”. I knew enough to leave room on the hard bench[8] for her to join me. On the shelf by the music sat her long wooden stick, meant to refashion recalcitrant schoolgirl fingers into well-rounded arches.[9] Now and again I’d feel its light tap upon my knuckles.[10] On occasion, Mrs. Kaufman would daub[11] the end of her nose with a lace handkerchief. The hanky would then disappear into the folds of her brown dress.[12]

I wonder now, with age and some knowledge of how to encourage children, whether I might have coaxed something resembling music out of those piano keys if Mrs. Kaufman had smiled at me from time to time or had dispensed with her wooden stick.[13] If I had switched to something relevant instead of playing “The Happy Farmer” ad nauseam[14], maybe I might have shown some progress.

There were other teachers as our family moved from place to place for my father’s work. For one bright and shining year, my sister and I took joint lessons from a young woman who lived in a sun-filled apartment with her husband and, wonder of wonders, their cherubic baby.[15] We raced to get there, to see the baby, to bask[16] in the teacher’s encouragement, to learn lilting new tunes as we sat side by side happily. She held a recital[17]. Our mom made us matching taffeta[18] dresses. We drank fizzy drinks[19] and won small prizes.

And then, too soon, a new town and a new piano teacher in another stuffy room where joy and fun were as locked away as if they’d been encased inside a Victorian bell jar.[20] Another two years of torturous lessons, another two years of giggling once we got out the door, wondering where on earth her handkerchief had ended up once she cast it into the depths of her gargantuan bosom.[21]

And then, when my own three children were tiny, fate brought me the most wonderful of European-trained teachers. Anna promised that one day, if I worked hard, she would let me migrate from the upright in her den to the baby grand in her sitting room.[22] For the first time in my life of lessons I felt the music filling me up, like an unborn baby, ready to leap and grow. It wasn’t to be. Anna met a sad death crossing the busy street near her home, a sudden ending at the end of a very long life.

Nine months ago, at the age of 63, I rented a cello[23].

I’ve always wanted to play the cello. My teacher, Rosemary, is a vivace[24] kind of girl. She has yellow sunflowers on her curtains. She takes kickboxing[25] lessons and I’ve never seen her blow her nose with a lace hanky. She owns no evil wooden stick with which to knock my fingers into place. She tells me that if I keep at it the sound of honking Canada geese from my strings will soon sound like larks ascending.[26] She knows I’m not too old to love happy-face stickers[27]. She never wears brown.

My fingers speed through the exercises in the minor keys that sound sad and haunting and Russian.[28]

“Slow down,” she whispers. But slowing down is not an option. She doesn’t know how long I’ve waited.

I knew, even at 8, that there had to be a better way. It just took me a while to find it.

Vocabulary

1. drag: 拖，拽；reluctant: 不情愿的，勉强的。

2. trudging: 步履艰难的；doom:（不可避免的）厄运，劫数；await: 将发生，将降临到（某人身上）。

3. sameness: 千篇一律，单调。

4. chignon:（女人的）发髻；taut: 拉紧的，绷紧的。

5. gloom: 黑暗，阴暗；wooden peg: 木制衣钉。

6. usher: 引，领；wordlessly: 默默无言地。

7. damask: 缎子。

8. bench: 长凳，长椅。

9. refashion: 改造，改变；recalcitrant: 难对付的，难驾驭的；well-rounded arches: （让手指弯成）形态优美的拱形（即手指以正确的姿势弹奏钢琴）。

10. now and again: 时而，不时；tap: 轻敲，轻拍；knuckle: 指节，指关节。

11. daub: （胡乱）涂抹。

12. hanky: 手帕；fold: 褶子。

13. 如今，随着年龄的增长，我也了解了一些如何鼓励孩子的知识。我想知道，如果考夫曼夫人当初能够不时对我微笑以待，或者摒弃她的木棍的话，我是否能从钢琴的琴键中收获音乐之类的东西。

14. ad nauseam:（某事重复次数太频繁以至于）烦人地，令人作呕地。

15. wonder: 奇妙之处；cherubic: 天真无邪的，可爱的。

16. bask:（在某种环境或气氛中）感到舒适，感到乐趣。

17. recital: 独奏会。

18. taffeta: 塔夫绸做的。

19. fizzy drink: 充气饮料（如香槟酒、汽水）。

20. stuffy: 闷的，空气不好的；encase: 把……装入箱（或盒、袋、套内）；Victorian: 维多利亚时代的；bell jar: 钟形玻璃罩。

21. torturous: 痛苦的；giggle: 咯咯地笑；on earth: 究竟，到底；gargantuan: 巨大的；bosom: 胸部。

22. upright: 此处指竖式钢琴；den: 小房间；baby grand: 小型卧式钢琴。

23. cello: 大提琴。

24. vivace: 活泼的。

25. kickboxing: 跆拳道。

26. 她告诉我，如果坚持练习，我的大提琴发出的加拿大鹅叫很快就会变成云雀飞上天时的叫声。

27. sticker: 有背胶的标签。

28. minor key: 小调；haunting: 给人强烈感受的，使人不安的；Russian:（音乐）俄罗斯风格的，具有坚定、雄厚、细腻隐秘的特点。

（来源：英语学习杂志）