It was a sunny weekend. Laura and Amanda were sitting on the beach, ready to take part in the sand sculpture contest（沙滩雕塑比赛）. The two sisters had been building sandcastles（沙堡）for years. They were really good at it. People often stopped to enjoy their work.

“I am confident about the sand sculpture contest. Let’s try to come up with a winning idea for today. We should make something really unusual this time. How about a big fish or something like that?” said Laura.

“I think we should make a sandcastle town, like we always do. Look, I collected all these shells（贝壳）for the walls of the sandcastle town,” Amanda said. She pointed at the shells of all sizes.

“Come on, let’s do something different,” Laura shouted. “Think big!”

“I don’t know,” Amanda said. “I think I will stick to（坚持）the sandcastle plan.” She held a lot of sand in her hands, trying to make it into a castle corner.

“I’ll just make my own, then.” Laura got angry so she walked a few meters away and then started to make her own sculpture.

At the end of the day, Laura gave up on her sculpture of a big fish attacking（攻击）a castle. It looked like a funny house with something silly on it. Laura wanted to make it better but she didn’t have time to improve it.

Amanda had made a small castle decorated（装饰）with a lot of shells. Around it, Amanda managed to build farmland out of the sand, but she didn’t finish as she had spent most of her time making little shell animals.

Looking around, Laura and Amanda realized that neither of them would win the contest. Laura’s sculpture was missing Amanda’s skillful touch, and Amanda’s castle was missing Laura’s big ideas.

“Have you checked the oil in the car?” My father used to say to me. “Hello, hope you are well.” Sometimes our phone calls would begin with a question about the oil and end with a question about the oil, with not a lot in between.

Fathers have a lot of love to give, but it’s often supplied through the medium (方法) of practical advice. In my experience: It’s mostly about my car.

“How’s the car running?” “Did you get it serviced?” “How did you get that scrape (刮痕) on the side?”

Why can’t fathers just say “I love you” or “It’s great to see you”? The point is: That’s exactly what we are saying. You just have to translate from the language that is Fatherlish.

The words “You made my life better from the moment you were born” may be hardly heard, but the key is there in the more common “I’ll hold the ladder while you get the leaves out of the gutter (排水沟).”

When I was 17, I went on my first road trip—a friend and I in that old car. My father stood on the corner early on a cold morning to say goodbye to us.

“Highways are dangerous,” he said, “so don’t try to catch up with anything faster than a horse. And take a break every two hours. And every time you stop for gas, you really should check the oil.”

At the time we thought his speech was pretty funny and would chant “car and horse, car and horse” every time I drove faster and passed other speeding cars.

Dad’s long gone now. But after all these years, I realize that had I owned a copy of the Fatherlish-to-English dictionary, I’d have understood that the speech my friend and I so casually mocked (嘲笑) was simply Dad’s attempt at affection.

Last year on Mother’s Day, someone from our community invited people to share stories about their mothers.

A policeman said his mother took him to the opera in St. Louis on Saturdays. He listened to dialects (方言) he didn’t understand. He grew to love opera. Now every Saturday he listens to a radio station that plays opera in the afternoons, enjoying Italian voices and fondly(深情地) remembering his mom.

A woman shared that she was only 17 months old when her mother died. Her father remarried. She values the things learned from her stepmother — how to keep house clean, cook and care for children. “But it wasn’t a mother’s love,” she said. “If you have a mother and you’ve known a mother’s love, don’t take it for granted.”

An businessman was 9 years old when his mom let him skip（逃课） school on his birthday. The car driver said, “Why aren’t you in school?” “My mom let me skip and is taking me out to lunch for my birthday,” he said. The attendant said, “Your mom loves you like nobody else. Don’t you ever forget that, OK? And take care of your mom!”

Another person shared that when he moved to the US as a young man, his parents did not agree. He came anyway and landed in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He found a roommate, and every weekend they drove to the roommate’s home where his mother had food prepared and waited for them. They’d pick it up and have food for the week. The roommate’s mother became a stand-in (替身) mother with whom he has kept a lifelong connection.

It is good to tell others what your mother, or someone who has helped fill that role, means to you. But if your mother is still living, it might also be good to tell her.