Partially Empty Nest, with Mixed Feelings
半空巢家庭的复杂情感
许剑 译
Thousands of parents send children off to college for the first time this fall, one of them is commentator Marion Winick. She knows that doesn’t qualify her quite as an empty-nester, and she doesn’t have even that needed term for the big adjustment it’s been for her younger children, who are still at home. They are without their older brother for the first time in their lives.
今年(2006年)秋季成千上万的父母送孩子初入大学校门，他们中有位叫马里恩•威尼克。她知道她还不能算作是空巢族，她对这种重大变化的不适感还不如她尚在家中的更年幼的孩子强烈。孩子们有生以来第一次同他们的哥哥分开。
Last month, the children of our family lost their historic leader when Hayes went off to college a few states south. It took two cars to fit all his stuff, so brother Vince chauffeured1 me and little Jane in my car, and Kenny Hayes followed in his jeep. Vince is so excited about his learner’s permit. It’s exciting for me too, especially when he does things like darting into the left lane when traffic is so thick that Hayes can’t follow us. “What are you doing, Vince?” I shouted. And a few minutes later, when Hayes still hadn’t reappeared, I called him on his cell phone to make sure he knew the name of the exit. He answered with a stream of recriminations2, though he knew I was not driving. Soon afterwards, Vince got annoyed by my direction-giving, and began shouting that I was crazy, and he would never drive anywhere with me again. Right then, Jane began whining from the back seat that she needed to go to the bathroom. “Now! I have to go now!” she cried.
A gas station appeared on the right and our maddened group swerved into it. The boys got out of their respective cars. “Dude,” said Vince to his older sibling3, “I’m so sorry about what happened back there.” “Dude,” said Hayes magnanimously, clapping his back. “It was cool. I wasn’t mad. God, mom is such a freak.” “I know man, let’s go in and get some beef jerky.”
“I’m hungry too!” said Jane. I looked at her accusingly. “Didn’t you have to go to the bathroom?”
In the week since we left Hayes in his dorm, things here have been weird and sad. I keep staring wistfully at the leftovers in the fridge. I can’t seem to adjust the quantities I cook for dinner. And he’s the only one who ate leftovers anyway. However, the house is much quieter without the beatings and the roughhousing that are the older brother’s purview4. And ganging up on mom just isn’t the same.
Meanwhile, the other day I ran into Vince’s guidance counselor, who exclaimed about how different Vince seemed this year. When pressed further she revealed that he had greeted her in the hall. He never did that before, she said. Perhaps with Hayes gone, the balance is shifting. I have a friend in Texas who said she never realized how exclusively her family’s dinner conversations focused on her older son until he left, and they started to talk to the younger one. They’ve learned a lot about Dungeons & Dragons5.
Last night I stared at a plate of homemade sushi rolls left over in the refrigerator. “Vince,” I said, “Isn’t sushi one of your favorite foods?” He thought a minute. “Yeah,” he said, “Give me that.” And settled down beside Jane to watch the Fairly Odd Parents. I think Vince has begun to notice a few job openings around here: Eater-of-leftovers, Friend-of-little-sister’s, Greeter-of-guidance-counselors.
I guess it happens every fall: The parents go around whining about their emptying nests while the little brothers and sisters move up a peg in the pecking order, unable to believe at first that no one’s swatting them down. “Do you miss Hayes?” I asked Vince the other day. “Well,” he said, “He hasn’t been gone that long.” “But you lived with him every day of your life for sixteen years, and he just disappeared!” “Yeah,” said Vince. “That’s what I mean.”
责任编辑：虫虫
