My Papa,Papa Kid

By Cai Yi

It felt like taking care of another child when my elderly father came to live with me.That night he went to bed at 9 pm,I would slip into my bedroom and enjoy a few moments of reading and writing before my own bedtime around 11:30.

When I was about to fall asleep,my old father opened my door and barged in,loudly demanding that it was already morning and that he wanted breakfast.It was actually midnight,as I turned on the light to look at my watch.

“What a life!” I moaned silently.But foreseeing the destined failure to reason with him,I just took him by the arm and helped him to the kitchen,pretending everything was OK.

After meeting his needs with my filial offering of hot milk,I lifted all the curtains to show him the total darkness outside,telling him again and again that daybreak was still far away.I led him to see his caregiver,A’ni,who was sleeping deeply after her heavy workload during the day.(It would be brutal to wake her up at this hour.)

老父親住進我家，我似乎又回到當年照顧兒子的歲月。

他晚上九點準時上床，我內心竊喜，趕快回自己房間，享受片刻閱讀寫作時光，十一點半左右熄燈就寢。當我剛要邁入夢鄉時，父親推門邁入我房間，大聲宣布：“天亮了，我要吃東西。”

我扭開床頭燈，看手表，剛十二點，暗自叫苦：“這以后的日子該怎么過？”我知道，這不是講道理的時刻。

我隱藏內心的不安，親熱地挽起父親手臂，帶他走進廚房，先沖大半杯熱牛奶，滿足他的需求，然后掀起房內各窗簾，看窗外一片漆黑，反復強調：“天沒亮，還是半夜呢。”再帶他看呼呼大睡的看護阿妮，阿妮白天認真照顧父親，夜間難得睡個好覺，不忍心叫醒她。

“看，阿妮在睡覺，大家都在睡覺。”在漆黑的家逛了一圈后，帶他回房，斜躺床上，聽我的“放松誘導詞”。

我一手輕撫父親的頭，一手握住父親的手，用穩定、低沉又緩慢的語調說：“請將眼睛閉起來，眼睛一閉起來，你就開始放松了……”

沒多久，父親原本緊張的表情變得柔和，呼吸變輕，在我掌心的指頭也放松了，他發出均勻的鼾聲，然后我躡手躡腳走回自己房間，就如當年悄悄走出四歲兒子的房間。

我再看表，十二點四十五分。我用四十五分的耐心換回下半夜的完整睡眠，沒有辯論，不用爭吵，在安定父親的過程中，我的焦慮也得以緩解。

“See? A’ni is sleeping.Everybody is sleeping.”

We walked along back to his bedroom.He finally laid down,listening in bed to my words of relaxation.

“Please close your eyes; close them,good,and now you feel relaxed…” I said slowly in a low voice,as I touched my father’s hair with one hand and held his hand with the other.

Soon his taut face softened,and so did his breath—I felt his fingers in my hand become relaxed.He snored steadily.When I left his room on my tiptoes,I remembered how I walked exactly the same way out of my four-year-old son’s bedroom.

I looked at the watch again and it was 12:45.With no argument or debate,I patiently spent only fortyfive minutes putting my father back to bed and slept soundly for the rest of the night.My anxiety was gone with his.

Later,I taught my father to sing songs and nursery rhymes during the day.He loved these old songs:“Time Will Pass Us,” “Time for the Little Lambs to Go Home,” “Su Wu the Shepherd,” and so on.Usually,I would learn the songs first with the aid of numbered musical notation before teaching my father and A’ni.A’ni was a fast learner in music and she soon shouldered the new task of teaching him songs after dinner.

As for the nursery rhymes,most of them came from a thick book titledChinese Nursery Rhymeswhich includes more than 1,500 songs.I singled out some simple and catchy rhymes and printed them on A4 paper so that my father could read them.We would learn them in the morning when his mind was comparatively clearer.I bought the book a long time ago for my toddler son to learn Chinese; back then I had no idea that 30 years later it would be opened again for my father.

We all know that many things pass down from generation to generation,but I’ve learned that they can pass back “up.”

To my surprise,my father could articulate some tricky rhymes with his strong accent.But that was only in the beginning.With the further mental decline,he could only deal with the simpler doggerel like “With your big head,big head,sudden rains are never a dread.”

Together we said it loud,both tapping the table to keep the rhythm and make it more fun.I saw the innocent joy on my father’s face,while he took no notice of the sadness in my foggy eyes.He knew nothing about how I missed my lost mother,my faraway son,and the man he used to be,in the remote past,teaching his threeyear-old boy rhymes as simple as these.It was too much for him to know.

Alone I heard a sound deep in my heart,like the break of a sand grain,or an echo in the silence of boundless space.

(FromForget Who I Am,Beijing United Publishing Co.,Ltd.Translation:Wang Xiaoke)

白天，我帶父親做功課，主要是歌曲、數來寶的反復練習。歌曲都是父親喜歡的，如《青春舞曲》《小小羊兒要回家》《蘇武牧羊》等。

通常我先按歌本簡譜學唱，然后教父親，也教看護阿妮。阿妮音感特別好，一學就會，很快，她可承接飯后帶父親練唱的責任。

至于數來寶，幾乎取材自《中國兒歌》，厚厚一本，收集了一千五百多首各地兒歌，我從中挑選簡單容易上口的，用粗黑字體打印在A4 紙上，方便父親閱讀。每天上午，他頭腦清醒時，是數來寶教學時間。

此書是為兒子學中文而買，當時我萬萬料不到，這本書歷經三十年后會用在老父親身上。

原來，多少事物代代相傳，順著傳，也可倒著傳。

剛開始，有濃重口音的父親仍能把“端湯上塔，塔滑湯灑，湯燙塔”說得字正腔圓，令我好生驚訝；隨著他的腦力退化，只能應付“大頭大頭，下雨不愁，人家有傘，我有大頭”這樣的打油詩。

說數來寶時，我和父親的聲調都非常高亢，還一起敲打桌面增添節奏熱鬧，父親滿臉的天真爛漫，他看不見我眼眶中的愴然熱淚，也不懂我懷念天上母親、遠方兒子、過往童年和三歲時他教我唱顛倒歌“胡說話，話說胡……”那顆人世悠悠之心。

這些都太復雜了，父親不懂。

只有我聽見內心深處的聲音，不知是瞬間碎裂的沙塵，還是曠宇寂寂的回音？（摘自《忘了我是誰》北京聯合出版公司）