我有很多年没有去她的墓地了，不过最近我去了。她的墓地上长了一枝野花。我坐下来，看着在风中摇曳的鲜花，明白这就像“古怪精灵”的尾巴一样，绕着圈摇摆。现在我明白了，这位特别的朋友将会一直陪伴着我。
你是我的阳光
My Father' s Shadow
琳达·钦·斯莱奇 / Linda Ching Sledge
My husband, Gary, and I were flying to Hawaii from New York City to show our five-month-old son, Timmy, to my parents for the first time. But what should have been a mission of joy filled me with apprehension. For five years I' d hardly spoken to my father. Loving but stern in the manner typical of Chinese fathers, he had made particular demands on me, and though we were very much alike, we' d grown very far apart.
When I became a teenager, my father held up my mother as a model of feminine behavior. But she was gregarious and social, while I preferred books to parties. He pressed me to mingle with his friends' children. I insisted on choosing my own companions. He assumed I' d follow in my mother' s footsteps and enroll in the local university to study teaching, and that I' d marry into one of the other long-established Chinese clans on the islands and settle down, as he and my mother had.
But I didn' t settle. As bullheaded as my father, I escaped to the University of California, where I fell in love with a haole, as we called Caucasians from the mainland. Gary had blue haole eyes and sandy haole hair. I announced that we were getting married—in Berkeley, not Hawaii. No huge, clamorous clan wedding for me. My parents came and met Gary just two days before our small, simple wedding. Afterward we moved to New York, as far from the islands as we could get without leaving American soil.
My father' s subsequent silence resonated with disapproval. He didn' t visit; neither did I. When my mother telephoned, he never asked to speak to me, and I never asked for him. We might have gone on like that, the habit of separation hardening into a permanent estrangement. Then Timmy was born, and I felt an unexpected tidal pull back to the islands.
On the long flight to Hawaii, memories of my childhood, when I was my father' s small shadow, came flooding back. I was three years old, running behind him as he walked between the banana trees in the plantation town where he taught high school. When I grew tired, he carried me on his shoulders. From there I could see forever. "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, " he would sing."You make me happy when skies are gray." I laughed, taking his devotion as my due.
Now the prodigal daughter was returning with the firstborn of the next generation—a hazel-eyed, golden-skinned hapa haole（half-white） child who looked little like his Chinese ancestors. How would my father react? If he disapproved of Timmy, as he had of me, the breach between us would be complete, I would never return.
The plane landed, and I gratefully placed a crying, hungry Timmy into my mother' s eager arms. Here was instant and unconditional acceptance of a child by his grandmother.
My father' s expression was passive and hard to read. He greeted us politely: "Good trip?" Then he peered cautiously at Timmy, who promptly began to shriek. My father stepped back in alarm. Did he find it unsettling that this squalling stranger might be his own flesh and blood?
After dinner at my parents' house, Gary and I retired to my old bedroom. My mother tucked Timmy into a borrowed crib in a room down the hall.
Four hours later mother instinct pulled me from sleep. This was the time Timmy usually woke for a bottle, but there were no cries of hunger, no fretful wails. Instead, I heard only the sweet, soft gurgle of baby laughter. I tiptoed down the hall.
In the living room, Timmy lay on a pillow on the floor in a circle of light, his plump, tiny fists and feet churning gleefully. He studied the face bent over him, an Asian face burned dark by the Hawaiian sun, with laugh wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. My father was giving Timmy a bottle, tickling his tummy and crooning softly, "You are my sunshine..."
I watched from the darkness, not wanting to break the spell, then crept back to my room. It was then I began to suspect that my father had wanted to mend the breach as much as I had. Awkward and proud, he hadn' t known how, and neither had I. Timmy became the bridge over which we could reach for each other.
For the rest of our stay, the tension slowly melted. My father and I didn' t discuss our rift directly. Thanks to Timmy, we didn' t need to. Having claimed his hapa haole grandson, my father no longer defined our family by uniform set of features. Curly-haired, hazel-eyed Timmy was loved for himself.
We returned to the islands the following summer. Timmy, now a toddler, splashed in the surf with his grandfather. The summer after that, they built a tree house out of scrap lumber and painted it blue.
So pleased was my father with his new grandfather status that he took early retirement when Timmy was four, to spend more time visiting his"New York family." My son and my father made a handsome pair as they walked together—the Chinese grandfather happily trailed by a different, bouncing shadow.
我和丈夫加里要从纽约乘飞机去夏威夷的父母家，为的是让五个月大的儿子蒂米与我们的父母见第一次面。然而，这次本应快乐的旅行，却让我忧心忡忡。五年了，我几乎没有同父亲讲过话。中国父亲典型的慈爱而又严厉的特性，使得父亲对我的要求很苛刻。尽管我们父女性格很相像，但是我们还是变得越来越疏远。
我十几岁大的时候，父亲就把母亲树立成我的女性行为典范。母亲擅长社交，而我更喜欢读书，而不是参加聚会。父亲强制要求我与他朋友的孩子们打成一片，而我坚持要自己选择自己的朋友。他设想着我能步母亲的后尘，在当地的大学学习师范专业，之后与一位夏威夷群岛上定居已久的某个华人家族的男子结婚，就像他和母亲一样。
但是，我并不安分。像父亲一样倔强的我逃到加利福尼亚大学去读书，在那里，我爱上了一个白人，也就是我们所说的外族人。加里长着白人所特有的蓝色眼睛和沙色头发。我告诉父母，我们马上就要在伯克利结婚了，而不是在夏威夷。我的婚礼并不盛大，也没有众多亲友参加。在我们简单而不盛大的婚礼举行前两天，父母过来与加里见了个面。后来，我们搬去纽约居住，在没有离开美国这片土地的前提下，尽可能地远离了父母。
父亲用后来的沉默来表示他对我们婚事的不赞成。他没有来看望过我，我也没有去看望过他。母亲给我打电话时，他也从来不要求同我讲话，而我也从不叫他说话。也许，我们本该会这样继续下去的，对分开的习以为常延续成为一种永久的隔阂。可是，蒂米随后出生了，我感觉到有一股莫名的冲动驱使着我要回到夏威夷。
在飞往夏威夷的漫长旅途中，儿时的记忆涌上心来。那时，我是跟在父亲身后的小影子。三岁的时候，父亲是移民小镇的高中老师，我小跑着跟随他穿过那里的香蕉林。等我累了的时候，他就让我骑在他的肩头。在那里，我看到了永恒。“你是我的阳光，是我唯一的阳光。”他这样唱道，“天空阴沉的时候，你仍会让我快乐。”我笑着，把他的爱视为理所当然。