尤蒂卡的午餐時光

If my life were a movie I would 2)fast-forward through junior high. My junior high years were painful. Like every junior high kid， I was dealing with awakening sexuality， and struggling with who I was and how I would make my mark in life. But I was sure I was alone with these strange feelings.

I was trying and failing in a number of things. I wanted to excel in athletics but had not yet figured out that that would never happen. I wasn’t 3)academic enough to spell academic. (I’m a little surprised right now that I was able to spell that without the aid of my 4)nifty little Microsoft Word spell checker). I was trying to 5)gain a spot in the 6)pecking order as a new kid in school. All the while， I remember suffering the rejection of most of my peers， being cut from the basketball team， failing to play football that I so wanted to play. It was a time of questioning how girls saw me and wanting so much to be loved and accepted. To be loved and accepted seemed to me at the time something I could never， in all my life， achieve.

During that time I would go through the cafeteria line and eat alone， feeling unloved and unnoticed. As spring came， one day I was starting out the door and complaining that I had no one to eat with. Mom said to me， “If you want， you can come home for lunch.” That day， when lunch came， it was a beautiful spring day in the hills of central Ohio. The bell rang at noon and I 7)bolted from the school and ran across the little village home to eat. I wondered if my mom would remember. When I got there， Mom was getting a little chicken 8)pot pie out of the oven for me. It was a very humble lunch. It was just one of those four-for-a-dollar pot pies with little 9)diced pieces of chicken， frozen peas and carrots， in some chicken 10)gravy.

Mom set a cloth napkin beside my plate at the end of the table just beneath the window. I sat at our humble kitchen table in our tiny， white rented home on Maple Street in Utica. Mom listened to me while I talked about whatever was on my mind. In about 15 minutes my time was up and I ran back to school.

That was in about 1972， thirty years ago. My mom at the time was in her early thirties. She seemed so old to me then and thirty-year-olds seem like children to me now. She sat across the table for about 15 minutes and looked at me and listened to me and three decades later I remember those times with fondness. She just paid attention to me. It’s a powerful thing to pay attention to people.

Now you know a little more about how I see home. Home is a place where you don’t have to sit alone and eat. Home is a place where people don’t ignore you and avoid you.

Home is a place where it doesn’t really matter that much what’s on the menu， simple things are sweet to the taste in an atmosphere of love and security and acceptance. Moms are people who listen to you when no one else is interested. And moms don’t ever think the small 11)mundane things you do don’t matter. Moms don’t laugh at your dreams. Good moms pay attention. Great moms12)fix you something warm to eat and pay attention.

I’m not sure what was happening at the time but I know those little chicken pot pies were not worthy of a 13)sprint across town. With the clarity of vision that the years bring， I now know that I needed a friendly place of warm acceptance for a few minutes a day. I didn’t need my stomach filled as much as I needed my emotional fuel tank refilled. And refueling an emotional fuel tank is a good mother’s specialty.

如果我的人生是一出電影，我會快進初中求學那部分內容。我的初中時光充滿了痛苦。像每個初中生一樣，我得面對情竇愛欲的萌芽，為認識自我建立自我而掙扎，苦惱該如何給自己的人生烙下印記。但那時，我確信自己得單獨面對這些奇怪的感受。

我嘗試過做一些事情，但都失敗了。我希望自己成為運動健將，但當時沒意識到那是絕不會發生的。我學業成績不好，連“academic”這個詞都拼不出來(此刻，沒有那棒極了的微軟文檔“拼寫檢查”小功能的幫助，我也能拼出“academic”那個詞，我都感到有些吃驚)。作為學校里的一名新生，我很想躋身于校園里的社交圈子。我一直記得自己當時遭到了大多數同齡人的排斥，被踢出籃球隊，渴望踢足球卻踢不成。那時候，我會揣測女孩們眼中的自己是怎樣的，多么希望有人愛自己，有人接受自己。但那時，被愛和被接受于我而言似乎是某種我這一生都不會得到的東西。

那段時光里，我會穿過在學生餐廳里排隊的人群，獨自用餐，感覺自己被忽視且不被喜歡。冬去春來，有一天，我準備出門，抱怨著沒人和我一起吃飯。母親對我說:“你喜歡的話，可以回家吃午飯呀。”那天，午餐時間到了，那正是俄亥俄州中部山區一個美麗的春日。中午，鈴聲響起，我從學校跑出來，跑過那個小村莊回家吃飯。不知道母親是否還記得當時的情景。當我回到家，母親正從烤爐里拿出一小塊雞肉餡餅給我。那是一頓簡便的午餐，就是一塊那種一美元就能買到四塊的雞肉餡餅，里面有些許雞肉粒，冰凍豌豆和胡蘿卜，澆上些雞肉汁。……