This last trip to India with you has brought home to me a few hard facts- facts that I wanted to avoid seeing for some time. As you well know, you and I have had a few arguments and several days of tension during the trip. I must admit sometimes I really do not know how to communicate to you what I really feel. Words seem to fail on both sides. That's why I am writing this letter. Perhaps it will be a bit easier.        ①         

As I approach my seventeenth year, I suddenly ask myself where I belong.1 know this is the usual teenage identity crisis. You came to this country when you were slightly older than I am and married my father. You admired the American lifestyle and tried to be an American as much as you could. I am the daughter of you, a mother who is Indian, and a father who is American. Of course, I am American. Except for a few trips to India I have little to do with India outwardly. But I feel how much you would like me to     become Indian sometimes. I cannot explain it with examples. But I feel it in my bones. The India that you never quite shake off comes back to you now and you want to see your daughter live it, at least partly.        ②         

Yes, Mummy, I know I am wrapped up in many superficial (肤浅的) things, things my friends indulge in (沉迷于) and I can understand your need to protect me. But I am part of them and in order for me to be accepted by my friends, sometimes I need to do things which do not always please me either. I need their approval and I want to be like them sometimes. But your good intentions to teach me those good Indian things then clash. Although I dislike the superficiality of my friends, I cannot move back to your culture just because it is better for you or more ancient or deep.        ③          

My dearest mother, I cannot be protected by you. Forgive me if I remind you of something you related   to me many times. You could not be protected by my grandparents (your parents) when you decided to embrace this culture along with my father.       ④        Nor can you protect me despite the fact that we are not separated by physical distance. Perhaps we are separated by something else and I suspect that is India.

I have never written a letter like this before in my short life. I feel good about writing this and would like to hear what you have to say, Ma, perhaps you and I can still be friends in a way that you and your mother could not be. Let’s try. I love you.

Yours,

Rita

We spend so much of our lives with our parents and yet most of it is devoted to routine and common place things.【小题1】 There may never be a better time than now to have a meaningful conversation with your parent or parents.

What is the one piece of advice you would like to share with me?

Your parents have a lifetime of experience and there are still things that you can learn from them. 【小题2】 Whatever it is it can pass into the family sayings and mythology.

What thing in your life made you the happiest or the proudest?

【小题3】 I mean you can talk about their achievements, joys and moments of pride. You may yourself feature there.

【小题4】

Perhaps this is a sad area that you would rather not explore but sometimes the answer can be revealing and explain things about your parents that you did not understand.

What event had the biggest impact on you?

Perhaps it was something to do with a war or a disaster. What was it that made a big impression? See if you can learn exactly how they felt and reacted at the time. It might put something you had only ever read about into the personal context of your parent.

The next time your see your aging parents, don’t just talk about minor domestic matters. Try asking some of the big questions above and then listen carefully to their answers. 【小题5】

When I was so small that my head barely touched the windowsill, we lived in the evergreen forests of Vermont. Our home was far, far away from any town or city, but that was the way we liked it.

Some winters, it got so cold that the river would freeze, which was unusual for water like that, water which ran so fast and deep. It felt as though time had stopped near the river, and so it had decided to become solid, settling in to wait for spring. We liked to skate on that river, my grandfather and I, even though the ice was uneven and his brown leather skates was so old.

One night, in the most frigid winter my young mind could recall, long after I should have been asleep, I caught my grandfather sneaking out of the front door, his ancient leather skates in his hands. He looked sheepish when he saw me, like I had caught him doing something silly, but I was so young that I thought no adult could ever do wrong. Especially not my grandfather, because he was the model of wisdom in my eyes.

“Grandpa, where are you going?” I asked.

“Skating on the river.”

“Why would you go out now? We did that yesterday morning.”

He looked a little thoughtful, and then he said: “It’s just that when you go out there, on the coldest, stillest night of the year, and you lie on your back on the thick, bubbled river ice, you can hear them.”

“Hear who?”

“The fish. Trapped there under the ice. You can hear them singing their watery winter song. And if you hold your breath, you can almost hear the stars singing in harmony.”