今年的五月份， 收到一封电子邮件。 祝贺Emmy 在2014加拿大读书周写作竞赛中获奖， 兼之核实住址， 会把250加币的一个大型书店Indigo 的购物卷寄过来。才知道Emmy参加了专门面对在校学生的全国范围的写作竞赛， 获得了十年级第一名。看获奖作者和获提名者的信息， 的确是有加东有加西,来自五湖四海。 评委团的组成也是有知名代表作品的加拿大作家们--看来这个竞赛的影响面还是比较广的。虽然我对英文文学作品的欣赏能力有限，但是能在全国范围内获得头奖，Emmy的英文写作能力， 还是应该刮目相看的。
购物券收到时， 正赶上母亲节。 带Emmy Allen到Indigo选购他们喜欢书籍。 有了购物卷， 作父母的第一次不用付单了。 大家都很高兴。书店里除了图书学习书房用品， 还卖一些日常的室内装饰和女士用品， Emmy让我选一样作为母亲节的礼物。 这里的东西，基本上是文青小资的调子， 品牌也比较挑剔， 不是日常百货商店常见的牌子。 好像沾染了书香， 价格也便昂贵了起来。 我选来选去， 挑了一瓶薰衣草味道的护肤露。 小小的一瓶，价格是外面的两倍。 Emmy 笑咪咪地说， "虽然贵了点， 可是这里的东西很精致啊。 还是值得的。 再说我有购物 卷啊。” 。 看着不用自己掏腰包来买的物品， 我有点百感交集。 “ Emmy今天很富有啊，不用妈妈来付账了。 250块， 奖金这次很多啊”。 Emmy笑笑， “不算多吧， 还有几千的呢。不过那得参加成年人的竞赛了”。
下面是我给拷贝上来的Emmy的小文：
Rock Sugar Sailor
We went, my mother and I, to the fall carnival on the hill with jaundiced dandelions. It was the eighth summer of my childhood, and was the first time I had ever thought it was all ridiculous. The autumn leaves had stained the backdrop of the scene shades of crimson, which I knew was really just a more pure version of the pink of my cotton candy stick that I gripped with a chubby, icy hand. Mrs. Walter had taught us that in school. We had hung up flags around our classroom that we colored, and they were red white and blue. We walked around until evening, when the paper lanterns that were strung along the stalls were lit up. We walked around and around some more under the little congealed pools of light. The leaves made a mush mush sound as I stepped on them. They were slick with rainwater. We came onto the starry night road and then there were sirens behind us and my mom’s hand was underneath a tire that came out of nowhere and I had dropped my pink cotton candy on the red puddle. I watched as the colors began to mix in the sugared strands. By the time I got into the cop’s car they would have equalized.
I sail ships now. Not literally, but in my mind. My theory goes that one of my ancestors was a relative of Christopher Columbus, something like Paul Columbus. He grew up in the shadow of his older relative who was really kind of a jerk. Paul wasn’t perfect. He had some anger issues, and wasn’t the most beloved anywhere he went. Nonetheless, he was never above admitting his flaws and always saved up his money from his shitty cargo transport job to take his girl on a night on the town. So it goes. It’s getting cold again, and the pill headaches always hurt worse in winter. When I go out on the campus at night I can freeze my tongue on icicles that dangle precariously down from the eaves of one of the gardener’s buildings. Sometimes I do, to try and recreate my childhood. I get stuck there for twenty minutes until the gardener removes the icicle with a pickaxe. I go home with a piece of ice stuck on my tongue. I go home thinking about whether or not that pickaxe was necessary. Sitting over hot chocolate on my laptop, I notice a typo in my cover letter, correct it, and go to bed. Not the same as before, but close enough.
When I close my eyes, I see the wide open sea, and it’s always a rainbow of blue, blue, blue. There are coral reefs and angel fish gliding by, and I can see them because the sea is clear and fresh and not a toxic waste dump. I sail my ship into a little seaside port with the little picturesque houses and the dewy mountains in the distance. I can’t go anywhere new, but delivering cargo is good too. I’m not an explorer. I’m Paul. Paul is close enough.
My friends convince me to go out drinking sometimes. Actually they convince me most times. I’m a fairly easy person to convince, provided you have enough arm strength to drag me along behind you. I scrape dirt off the table with my fingernail, which I guess is enough of a sexy pose. We drink screwdrivers, and then some weird Asian liquor Jamie bought off Ebay and hid in her jacket. We clink our glasses against each other, and mine chips. The glass specks settle, and I don’t bother to take a drink or pick them out. They reflect the blue fireworks that are going off for whatever the hell today is. It’s a mesmerizing storm of clear liquid shimmering with blue, a storm in a teacup, practically. It overflows onto the floor and spills down my leg when Karen pours some more in. Her eyes are half lidded and she tells me I smell like the sea, which I guess is a compliment. I have to go to work the next day, and leave early.
I volunteer in the hospital too. I hear it all the time too, that I’m lucky to have the chance to go to college and hopefully medical school and slice people up without getting arrested. There are kids in Africa that never get that opportunity. One of them is staring with pleading eyes at me from the cover of the magazine stand, please donate fifty dollars to buy me a goat. The air smells like disinfectant. I want to leave this place. The air here is too sterile and reminds me of my sad empty college dorm room and my sad empty life. Am I a bad person? Am I? Am I? Do I want to go away? I ask myself these things over and over again. I look again at the little African kid who’ll never get to awkwardly comfort a grieving family member. Am I a loser? Yeah, maybe.
Like my grandpa always said, “ ‘Long as you have money and a place to lay your head down, everything’ll turn out alright”. I’m alright. It could be worse. This is life; life is quite alright.
There are some little blue flowers growing on the hill near the cemetery, across the road from the bus stop. The summer grasses now blanket the hill with a rippling expanse of dirty olive. I know the truth, and that’s that the grass is blue. The magnolia trees dropping their fist sized flowers on the ground are an illusion, and to an extent so is Paul. This is not a revelation. I feel like a fool, and lie down on the hill, because the truth of what I think is really too much for this fool to handle. Sometimes there’s no other way in life but just to go on taking your meds and singing happy songs, but that’s close enough. Sometimes you can’t cry but do that weird huffy red eyed thing instead, which is further from the mark but still close enough. The tiny blue buds that face skyward with their yellow centers and delicate arching stems don’t care.
Still, the soft wind blowing reverently over heavy seeds and airy dust particles is real enough for me today. Sometimes the sensation of dew evaporating into the wind around midday from the moist earth makes me think sinking isn’t so bad.
宣布获奖者的网络地址：
http://www.bookweek.ca/contest_winners2014
这里是Emmy获奖文的链接：
http://bookweek.ca/files/PDFs/2014/grade10_winner.pdf
感谢陈大哥对一篇旧日志的评论， 把将要被尘封的记忆又牵扯出来， 所以补上这篇日志。 孩子们的成点长滴， 作父母还是应该尽可能得记录一下。 等他们长大成人时整理一下送给他们， 应该是一份儿珍贵的礼物吧。
