首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
My mother’s hands are deep in Cabbage leaves, her sleeves pushed up past her elbows, as she sifts through water, salt, and veget
My mother’s hands are deep in Cabbage leaves, her sleeves pushed up past her elbows, as she sifts through water, salt, and veget
admin
2010-02-20
27
问题
My mother’s hands are deep in Cabbage leaves, her sleeves pushed up past her elbows, as she sifts through water, salt, and vegetable. Beneath her nails are saffron flakes of red pepper powder. My mother wears an apron; under it her stomach is full and round. The apron is blue with red borders. I remember she bought it one day at Woodward’s on sale.
I sit at the kitchen table beneath a peach-painted ceiling and a chandelier with oversized plastic teardrops. Every now then I get up and walk over to the counter, peer into the yellow tub, watch, pretend to watch, and then sit down again. Across from me, the little knick-knacks my mother loves So much-ceramic flowers, Delfts-blue miniature vases, a figurine forever windblown -- are arranged carefully upon the window sill.
My mother’s hands are thin-skinned, pale, spotted and freckled with age and sun. The nails are thick, almost yellow. A few strands of hair, not quite black, fall over her forehead and her mouth is slightly open, the tip of her tongue just visible between her teeth as she lifts and mixes the cabbage leaves. "Are you paying attention?" she wants to know, and I nod at ceramic flowers, Delfts-blue miniature vases, a figurine forever windblown.
Kim chee is pickled cabbage. Friends always ask me for botfies of the stuff: Mama Kim’s special recipe, they tease. I pass this on the my mother and she grumbles and laughs, embarrassed, pleased.
My mother’s hands lle in my lap and I touch them carefully, life them like small, live animals, fit them into the plans of my own hands, turn them over and think of crab-hunting as a child and a trail of overturned, shell-encrusted sea rocks.
Once I told my mother that I would like to photograph’ her hands, and she peered down at them, lifted her hands up to her face suspiciously as if seeing them for the first time. "My hands?" she asked, and I went and fetched some skin lotion from the bathroom. Her hands were too dry.
I had her sit on the couch in the living-room. The couch was floral-patterned and she sat in the centre of it, awkward, distracted. I took the pictures, head-to-toe shots, some of her hands alone. They lay limply in her lap. She held one hand with the other. She didn’t know what else to do with them. I took the pictures. Every ten minutes or so she got up and walked to the kitchen, checked the oven, the various pots. My father walked by once, and joked, "How about my hands?"
The cabbage leaves are washed and salted and rinsed. This much I remember. A winter’s sun floats in through the window, plays weakly with the plastic tear-drops, falls down onto the kitchen table, onto my own hands. I suppose they will soon lock like hers.
I get up, restless, lean over the counter, try to concentrate. Every year for the last five years or so I have asked my mother to teach me how to pickle cabbage. Every year I have watched her hands, seen the aprons change, the stomach grow more round -- the cabbage leaves are washed and salted and rinsed. This much I remember.
I take the roils of film to a friend who knows something about photography. He develops them and is impressed. He sees a small Asian woman, smiling hesitantly into a camera, lost among the flowers of living-room couches. She is tired and stiff. My friend doesn’t even notice her hands. He calls the photos "real", I call them "disappointing".
The kim chee is just made so it is not quite ripe, but we eat a little of it at dinner, anyway. My father tells me his story about villagers who ran away during the war, as the bombs came down, with earthenware kim chee pots in their anus. It is favourite, not quite-ripe kim chee story.
When the winter sunlight comes through the kitchen window, tear-refracted onto my own hands. I stop writing and put down my pen. My mother asks, "What are you writing?" And I tell her that I am writing about kim chee. She laughs, "You don’t even know how to make it".
The rice, the bulgogi, the chap chee are eaten. The kim chee is returned to its plastic ice-cream container. My mother and my father tell more stories to each other .as I clear the table. They speak quickly in their own language, animated, a live. For a few moments I am forgotten, the daughter who would be bored by such stories. I put the dishes away. Strange, that it has never been strange not to understand them.
I go through the photographs once again, wondering what it is that is missing or that I’ m not seeing. I spread them out onto the kitchen table. My mother looks over my shoulder and makes a sound, a familiar, all-purpose clicking of the tongue. "All that film... ’, she says as she walks back to the stove.
I look at the photographs and I look at my mother in her woodward’s apron, her hands holding chopsticks, wooden spoons, the handles of pots and pans. I look at her hands and they are alive. They speak quickly. And this, I guess, is all I really need to remember.
According to the passage, what’s the character of the author’s mother?
选项
A、Gentle.
B、Reserved.
C、Hot-tempered.
D、Restless.
答案
A
解析
该题问:根据这篇文章,作者母亲的性格是什么?A项意为“和善温顺的”;B项意为“说话不多的”,C项意为“性急的”:D项意为“好动的,不安宁的”。这从本文描写作者母亲默默地干活,即使听从女儿安排照相时,也每十分钟站起来去厨房看一下炉子(烤箱),各个锅。这都说明母亲善良、温顺、从不计较。因此A项为正确选项。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/NZvO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Theautomobile,alongwithahouseandagarden,is【C1】______oftheAmericanDream.The【C2】______had1.8vehicles;eachvehic
Thebiggestdangerfacingtheglobalairlineindustryisnottheeffectsofterrorism,war,SARSandeconomicdownturn.Itisth
Eightthousandyearsago,forestscoveredmorethan23millionsquaremiles,orabout40percentofEarth’slandsurface.Today,
Itisdifficulttogiveadescriptionof【C1】______becausetheyvaryfromstatetostateandcitytocity.Sometownsallowth
Middlebornchildrenwilltellyouthattheyusuallydidn’tfeelallthatspecialwhilegrowingup.Thefirstbornhadhisspot-
Weoftenhearandreadaboutcontroversialissuesinscienceandtechnology.Forexample,willradiationfromelectronicequipm
A、Viamail.B、Byphone.C、Throughatravelagency.D、Withabookingoffice.B
Theterm"Americandream"wasfirstusedin【B1】______inanovelwrittenbyHoratioAlger:RaggedDick.Themessagewas:Nomatte
Specializationcanbeseenasaresponsetotheproblemofanincreasingaccumulationofscientificknowledge.Bysplittingupt
______’sLeavesofGrassisacollectionofpoemswritteninfreeverse.
随机试题
婴儿期
根据我国《合同法》的规定,一般情况下,合同自时成立。
这所大学提供了他所期望的一切。
某男,58岁。胃大部切除术后已近中年,头晕心悸,气短乏力,面唇淡白,舌淡嫩,脉弱。辨证为
在安装施工中,对设备和管道内壁有特殊清洁要求的,应进行酸洗,下列关于酸洗的说法正确的有()。
迟老师编写的校本教材出现了不少错误,遭到同事的质疑。迟老师说:“这不过是一本校本教材而已,没必要那么认真。”迟老师的做法()。
班主任了解和研究学生的基本方法是()。
据说在英国人那里也出现了英语【a】的问题,或者说,英语圈内也发生了非规范化向规范化的冲击。真是“吾道不孤”——人们多以为现代汉语非规范化现象太使人生气,原来“天下乌鸦一般黑”,这【b】的恶魔到处在横行霸道。这是英国伦敦一个被称为“保守的思想库”—
在社会主义改造中对资本主义工商业实行赎买政策,实现了“和平过渡”。其实质是()
Marriagemayimproveyoursleep,andbettersleepmayimproveyourmarriage,twonewstudiessuggestWomenwhoaremarriedo
最新回复
(
0
)