而如今，浪子般的女儿带着新生的下一代回家来了。蒂米是长着μ褐色的眼睛，有黄色皮肤的混血白种男孩，看上去与他的中国祖先们没有什么相像之处。父亲会有怎样的反应？如果他不喜欢蒂米，就像当初对我那样，那么，我和父亲之间的裂痕就会无法修复，我也将永远不再回来。
下了飞机，我充满感激地将又哭又饿的蒂米送进母亲热切的怀抱。母亲立即毫无条件地接受了她的外孙。
父亲脸上的表情是冷漠的，很难读懂。他客气地向我们致意说：“旅途愉快吗？”之后就谨慎地凝视着蒂米，蒂米很快就被吓哭了。父亲吓得后退了一步。发现这个号叫着的陌生人与自己血脉相连，父亲是不是有些不安呢？
在父母家吃过晚餐后，加里和我进入我来的卧室休息。妈妈则把蒂米抱到走廊尽头的一张借来的婴儿床里。
四个小时后，做母亲的本能把我从睡梦中唤醒。通常这个时间蒂米就要吃奶了，但是此时外面没有他饿哭或焦躁不安的声音。相反，我只听到婴儿甜美而轻柔的咯咯笑声。我蹑手蹑脚地向走廊尽头走去。
在起居室里，蒂米躺在地板上的一个枕头上，四周是一圈光亮，他胖墩墩的小è头和双脚正快乐地踢蹬着。他盯着俯在他正上方的这张脸—— 一张被夏威夷的阳光晒黑的，微笑时眼角有皱纹的亚洲人的脸。父亲正在用奶瓶给蒂米喂奶，他一边挠着蒂米的小肚子，一边轻声地哼唱着：“你是我的阳光”
我静静地在黑暗中观望着，不想打破这份美好，而后又悄悄返回了自己的房间。于是，我开始猜想，父亲也同我一样，希望能够修复我们父女之间的裂痕，只是笨拙而自傲的他不知道该如何修复，一如我一样。而蒂米成为横架在我与父亲之间的沟通桥梁。
此后，我们在那里小住的日子里，我与父亲之间的紧张气氛开始慢慢消融。父亲和我都不会直接谈论我们之间的隔阂。幸亏有蒂米，我们才没必要去谈论。接受了他混血的外孙之后，父亲也不再用相同的面部特征来界定自己的家族。有着鬈发和浅褐色眼睛的蒂米因其自身而备受外祖父的宠爱。
第二年夏天，我们回到了夏威夷。蒂米此时已开始蹒跚学步，和他的外祖父一起在浪花里嬉戏。第三年夏天，他们用废弃的木料盖了一间木房子，并把它涂成了蓝色。
父亲对他的外祖父身份感到十分快慰。于是，在蒂米四岁的时候，父亲选择了提早退休，以便有更多的时间光顾他的“纽约之家”。儿子和父亲走在一起时，是多么般配的一对啊—— 一位中国外祖父身后跟着一个不同种族、活泼可爱的小身影。
栀子花开
Mystery of the White Gardenia
佚名 / Anonymous
Every year on my birthday, from the time I turned 12, a white gardenia was delivered to my house in Bethesda, Md. No card or note came with it. Calls to the florist were always in vain—it was a cash purchase. After a while I stopped trying to discover the sender' s identity and just delighted in the beauty and heady perfume of that one magical, perfect white flower nestled in soft pink tissue paper.
But I never stopped imagining who the anonymous giver might be. Some of my happiest moments were spent daydreaming about someone wonderful and exciting but too shy or eccentrics to make known his or her identity.
My mother contributed to these imaginings. She' d ask me if there was someone for whom I had done a special kindness who might be showing appreciation. Perhaps the neighbor I' d help when she was unloading a car full of groceries. Or maybe it was the old man across the street whose mail I retrieved during the winter so he wouldn' t have to venture down his icy steps. As a teenager, though, I had more fun speculating that it might be a boy I had a crush on or one who had noticed me even though I didn' t know him.
When I was 17, a boy broke my heart. The night he called for the last time, I cried myself to sleep. When I awoke in the morning, there was a message scribbled on my mirror in red lipstick:"Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive." I thought about that quotation from Emerson for a long time, and until my heart healed, I left it where my mother had written it. When I finally went to get the glass cleaner, my mother knew everything was all right again.
I don' t remember ever slamming my door in anger at her and shouting, "You just don' t understand!" because she did understand.
One month before my high-school graduation, my father died of a heart attack. My feelings ranged from grief to abandonment, fear and overwhelming anger that my dad was missing some of the most important events in my life. I became completely uninterested in my upcoming graduation, the senior-class play and the prom. But my mother, in the midst of her own grief, would not hear of my skipping any of those things.
The day before my father died, my mother and I had gone shopping for a prom dress. We' d found a spectacular one, with yards and yards of dotted Swiss in red，white and blue, it made me feel like Scarlett O' Hara, but it was the wrong size. When my father died, I forgot about the dress.
My mother didn' t. The day before the prom, I found that dress—in the right size—draped majestically over the living-room sofa. It wasn' t just delivered, still in the box. It was presented to me—beautifully, artistically，lovingly. I didn' t care if I had a new dress or not. But my mother did.
She wanted her children to feel loved and lovable, creative and imaginative, imbued with a sense that there was magic in the world and beauty even in the face of adversity. In truth, my mother wanted her children to see themselves much like the gardenia—lovely, strong and perfect—with an aura of magic and perhaps a bit of mystery.
My mother died ten days after I married. I was 22 years old. That was the year the gardenias stopped coming.
从我12岁那年起，每年都有人在我生日那天把一枝洁白的栀子花送到家里（马里兰州贝塞斯达镇上），没有卡片，也没有字条。我多次打电话到花店询问，但总问不出个所以然来——这些花都是用现金支付的。后来，我就不再追查送花人，只是尽情享受那枝神秘的、用粉红绢纸包扎的雪白花朵的瑰丽和浓郁芳香。
