论文部分内容阅读
I’ll never forget Easter 1946. I was fourteen, my little sister, Ocy, was twelve and my older sister, Darlene, was sixteen. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do without. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with no money and seven school-aged kids to raise.
By 1946, my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home. A month before Easter, the pastor of our church announced that a special holiday offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.
When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy fifty pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save twenty dollars of our grocery money for the offering. Then we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn’t listen to the radio, we’d save money on that month’s electric bill. Darlene got as many house-cleaning and yard-cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us baby-sat for everyone we could. For fifteen cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three potholders to sell for a dollar. We made twenty dollars on potholders. That month was one of the best of our lives.
Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we’d sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about eighty people in church, so we figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be twenty times that much. After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.
The night before Easter, we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn’t care that we wouldn’t have new clothes for Easter; we had seventy dollars for the sacrificial offering. We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn’t own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn’t seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet.
But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about our old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich.
When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting in the second row form the front. Mom put in the ten-dollar bill, and each of us kids put in a twenty-dollar bill.
We sang all the way home from church. At lunch, Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon, the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn’t say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp twenty-dollar bills, one ten-dollar bill and seventeen one-dollar bills.
Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn’t talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling poor. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn’t have our Mom and our late Dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night. We had two knives that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn’t have a lot of things that other people had, but I’d never thought we were poor.
That Easter day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor, I thought. I didn’t like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed —— I didn’t even want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!
I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over one hundred students. I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor. I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time.
We sat in silence for along time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally, on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn’t know. We’d never know we were poor. We didn’t want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn’t talk on the way. Mom started to sing, but no one joined in, and she sang only one verse.
At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun —— dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said one hundred dollars would put a roof on a church. The minister added, “Can’t we all sacrifice to help these poor people?” We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.
Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene, Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering.
When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over one hundred dollars. The missionary was excited. He hadn’t expected such a large offering form our small church. He said, “You must have some rich people in this church.” Suddenly it struck us! We had given eighty-seven dollars of that “little over one hundred dollars.”
We were the rich family in the church! Hadn’t the missionary said so? From that day on, I’ve never been poor again.
我永远忘不了1946年的复活节。那一年我14岁,妹妹奥丝12岁,姐姐达琳16岁。我们和母亲住在一起。我们四个人都知道该如何生存。爸爸在五年前去世了,没给妈妈留下一文钱,只给她留下了七个正在上学的孩子。
到1946年,我的姐姐们都结了婚,哥哥们也都离开了家。复活节前的一个月,我们所属教堂的牧师宣布,要为帮助穷困家庭进行一次特殊的节日募捐。他请每个人作出牺牲,奉献爱心。
我们回到家后,就开始讨论这个问题。我们决定买50磅的马铃薯,并用它维持这个月的生活。这样,我们就可以节省下20美元的菜金作为捐款捐献出去。接着,我们又想到,如果我们尽可能的不点灯,不听收音机,就能缩减那个月的电费开支。达琳尽力担负起全部的房间和院子的清洁工作,而我们两个小一点的孩子则尽可能的替别人照看婴儿。又因为我们用15美分就能买到够做三块垫热锅用的布垫子的棉线,而三块布垫子能盈利1美元。我们做这些布垫子赚到了20美元。那个月是我们有生以来生活最快乐的一个月。
我们每天都把钱拿出来数一数,看看已经积攒下了多少钱。晚上我们就坐在黑暗里,谈论当那些贫穷的家庭得到教堂给他们的钱时会多么高兴。我们所在的教堂大约有80户人家,因此我们能够想象得出不管我们捐出多少钱,捐款的总数额都会20倍于我们的捐款。因为,牧师每个星期天都要提醒人们要为募捐节约开支。
复活节的前一天晚上,我们都兴奋地睡不着觉。我们不在乎复活节没有新衣服穿;重要的是,我们为募捐积攒了70美元。我们几乎都等不及去教堂了!星期天早上,大雨如注。虽然我们没有伞,虽然教堂离我们家有一英里多的路程,但是我们全没放在心上。达琳用纸板垫在鞋子里堵住鞋底的漏洞。纸板烂了,达琳的脚全湿透了。
然而,这又算得了什么。我们坐在教堂里,心里充满自豪。我听到一些十几岁的孩子正在谈论我们的旧衣服。我看着他们身上的新衣服,却觉得自己很富有。
当募捐开始的时候,我们正坐在前面第二排的座位上。妈妈塞进一张10美元的钞票,我们每个孩子各塞进了一张20美元的钞票。
我们从教堂回家的时候一路唱着歌。吃午饭的时候,妈妈给了我们一个意外的惊喜。她买了一打鸡蛋,我们的复活节午餐有煮鸡蛋和煎马铃薯!那天下午稍晚一些的时候,牧师开着他的汽车来到我们家。妈妈走到门口和他谈了一会儿,回来的时候手里拿着一个信封。我们问她那是什么,但是她什么也没说。她打开信封,从里面掉出一沓钞票。分别是三张20美元的、一张10美元的和17张1美元的。
妈妈把这些钱放回信封里。我们都没有说话,只是坐在那里,注视着地板。我们刚才还觉得自己是百万富翁,现在这种感觉一落千丈,觉得自己很贫穷。我们兄弟姊妹们一直过得很幸福,我们总是为那些没有像我们的爸爸妈妈这样的父母的孩子们感到遗憾,我们家里兄弟姊妹众多,其他孩子经常到我们家里来玩。我们认为和别人共用银餐具是很有趣的事,而猜测自己吃晚餐时是用汤勺还是用刀叉也很有意思。我们家有两把刀子,谁需要谁就用它。我知道我们家和别人家不一样,我们没有足够的器皿,但是我们从来不认为我们贫穷。
但是在那个复活节,我发现我们确实是贫穷的。牧师给我们送来了为贫穷家庭募捐的钱,那么我们一定是穷人了,我想我不喜欢做穷人。我看着我的衣服和破旧的鞋子,觉得很羞愧——我甚至不再想到教堂去了。那儿所有的人可能都已经知道我们是穷人了!
我又想到了学校。我上九年级,是班里100多名学生中成绩最优异的。我不知道同学们是不是知道我们是穷人。我想,既然我已经完成了八年级,我可以退学了。这是那时候的法律所允许的最低学历。
我们沉默地坐了很长时间。天黑以后,我们就去睡觉了。在那个星期里,我们女孩子们象平常一样上学,回家,谁也没有多谈论此事。终于,又到了星期六,妈妈问我们我们想怎么处理这些钱。穷人们都是如何处理这些钱的呢?我们不知道。我们从来没有认为自己是穷人。我们星期天不想去教堂,但是妈妈说我们得去。虽然那天天气很好,阳光明媚,但是我们一路上什么也没说。妈妈开始唱歌,但是没有人跟着唱,她也只唱了一节。
那天,有一位传教士来给我们布道。他说在非州,教堂都是由风干的石块砌成的,但是他们需要钱买屋顶的材料。他说建一座教堂的屋顶需要100美元。传教士最后说,“难道我们不能作出一点牺牲来帮助那些贫穷的人吗?”我们彼此看了看,脸上均露出了一星期以来的第一次微笑。
妈妈把手伸进她的钱包里,拿出那个信封。她把它递给达琳,达琳把它递给了我,我又把它递给了奥丝。奥丝把它放进了募捐箱里。
牧师数过捐款以后,宣布捐款数额稍稍超出了100美元。传教士很兴奋。他本没有期望能在我们这座小教堂里募捐到这多么的款项的。他说,“你们这座教堂里一定有很多富裕的人。”这句话猛然惊醒了我们!在那稍稍超出的100美元的款项中我们的捐款占了87美元。
我们是这座教堂里最富裕的家庭!难道传教士不是这么说的吗?从那天开始,我再也没觉得自己贫穷了。
By 1946, my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home. A month before Easter, the pastor of our church announced that a special holiday offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.
When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy fifty pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save twenty dollars of our grocery money for the offering. Then we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn’t listen to the radio, we’d save money on that month’s electric bill. Darlene got as many house-cleaning and yard-cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us baby-sat for everyone we could. For fifteen cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three potholders to sell for a dollar. We made twenty dollars on potholders. That month was one of the best of our lives.
Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we’d sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about eighty people in church, so we figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be twenty times that much. After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.
The night before Easter, we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn’t care that we wouldn’t have new clothes for Easter; we had seventy dollars for the sacrificial offering. We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn’t own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn’t seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet.
But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about our old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich.
When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting in the second row form the front. Mom put in the ten-dollar bill, and each of us kids put in a twenty-dollar bill.
We sang all the way home from church. At lunch, Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon, the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn’t say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp twenty-dollar bills, one ten-dollar bill and seventeen one-dollar bills.
Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn’t talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling poor. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn’t have our Mom and our late Dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night. We had two knives that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn’t have a lot of things that other people had, but I’d never thought we were poor.
That Easter day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor, I thought. I didn’t like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed —— I didn’t even want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!
I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over one hundred students. I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor. I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time.
We sat in silence for along time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally, on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn’t know. We’d never know we were poor. We didn’t want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn’t talk on the way. Mom started to sing, but no one joined in, and she sang only one verse.
At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun —— dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said one hundred dollars would put a roof on a church. The minister added, “Can’t we all sacrifice to help these poor people?” We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.
Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene, Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering.
When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over one hundred dollars. The missionary was excited. He hadn’t expected such a large offering form our small church. He said, “You must have some rich people in this church.” Suddenly it struck us! We had given eighty-seven dollars of that “little over one hundred dollars.”
We were the rich family in the church! Hadn’t the missionary said so? From that day on, I’ve never been poor again.
我永远忘不了1946年的复活节。那一年我14岁,妹妹奥丝12岁,姐姐达琳16岁。我们和母亲住在一起。我们四个人都知道该如何生存。爸爸在五年前去世了,没给妈妈留下一文钱,只给她留下了七个正在上学的孩子。
到1946年,我的姐姐们都结了婚,哥哥们也都离开了家。复活节前的一个月,我们所属教堂的牧师宣布,要为帮助穷困家庭进行一次特殊的节日募捐。他请每个人作出牺牲,奉献爱心。
我们回到家后,就开始讨论这个问题。我们决定买50磅的马铃薯,并用它维持这个月的生活。这样,我们就可以节省下20美元的菜金作为捐款捐献出去。接着,我们又想到,如果我们尽可能的不点灯,不听收音机,就能缩减那个月的电费开支。达琳尽力担负起全部的房间和院子的清洁工作,而我们两个小一点的孩子则尽可能的替别人照看婴儿。又因为我们用15美分就能买到够做三块垫热锅用的布垫子的棉线,而三块布垫子能盈利1美元。我们做这些布垫子赚到了20美元。那个月是我们有生以来生活最快乐的一个月。
我们每天都把钱拿出来数一数,看看已经积攒下了多少钱。晚上我们就坐在黑暗里,谈论当那些贫穷的家庭得到教堂给他们的钱时会多么高兴。我们所在的教堂大约有80户人家,因此我们能够想象得出不管我们捐出多少钱,捐款的总数额都会20倍于我们的捐款。因为,牧师每个星期天都要提醒人们要为募捐节约开支。
复活节的前一天晚上,我们都兴奋地睡不着觉。我们不在乎复活节没有新衣服穿;重要的是,我们为募捐积攒了70美元。我们几乎都等不及去教堂了!星期天早上,大雨如注。虽然我们没有伞,虽然教堂离我们家有一英里多的路程,但是我们全没放在心上。达琳用纸板垫在鞋子里堵住鞋底的漏洞。纸板烂了,达琳的脚全湿透了。
然而,这又算得了什么。我们坐在教堂里,心里充满自豪。我听到一些十几岁的孩子正在谈论我们的旧衣服。我看着他们身上的新衣服,却觉得自己很富有。
当募捐开始的时候,我们正坐在前面第二排的座位上。妈妈塞进一张10美元的钞票,我们每个孩子各塞进了一张20美元的钞票。
我们从教堂回家的时候一路唱着歌。吃午饭的时候,妈妈给了我们一个意外的惊喜。她买了一打鸡蛋,我们的复活节午餐有煮鸡蛋和煎马铃薯!那天下午稍晚一些的时候,牧师开着他的汽车来到我们家。妈妈走到门口和他谈了一会儿,回来的时候手里拿着一个信封。我们问她那是什么,但是她什么也没说。她打开信封,从里面掉出一沓钞票。分别是三张20美元的、一张10美元的和17张1美元的。
妈妈把这些钱放回信封里。我们都没有说话,只是坐在那里,注视着地板。我们刚才还觉得自己是百万富翁,现在这种感觉一落千丈,觉得自己很贫穷。我们兄弟姊妹们一直过得很幸福,我们总是为那些没有像我们的爸爸妈妈这样的父母的孩子们感到遗憾,我们家里兄弟姊妹众多,其他孩子经常到我们家里来玩。我们认为和别人共用银餐具是很有趣的事,而猜测自己吃晚餐时是用汤勺还是用刀叉也很有意思。我们家有两把刀子,谁需要谁就用它。我知道我们家和别人家不一样,我们没有足够的器皿,但是我们从来不认为我们贫穷。
但是在那个复活节,我发现我们确实是贫穷的。牧师给我们送来了为贫穷家庭募捐的钱,那么我们一定是穷人了,我想我不喜欢做穷人。我看着我的衣服和破旧的鞋子,觉得很羞愧——我甚至不再想到教堂去了。那儿所有的人可能都已经知道我们是穷人了!
我又想到了学校。我上九年级,是班里100多名学生中成绩最优异的。我不知道同学们是不是知道我们是穷人。我想,既然我已经完成了八年级,我可以退学了。这是那时候的法律所允许的最低学历。
我们沉默地坐了很长时间。天黑以后,我们就去睡觉了。在那个星期里,我们女孩子们象平常一样上学,回家,谁也没有多谈论此事。终于,又到了星期六,妈妈问我们我们想怎么处理这些钱。穷人们都是如何处理这些钱的呢?我们不知道。我们从来没有认为自己是穷人。我们星期天不想去教堂,但是妈妈说我们得去。虽然那天天气很好,阳光明媚,但是我们一路上什么也没说。妈妈开始唱歌,但是没有人跟着唱,她也只唱了一节。
那天,有一位传教士来给我们布道。他说在非州,教堂都是由风干的石块砌成的,但是他们需要钱买屋顶的材料。他说建一座教堂的屋顶需要100美元。传教士最后说,“难道我们不能作出一点牺牲来帮助那些贫穷的人吗?”我们彼此看了看,脸上均露出了一星期以来的第一次微笑。
妈妈把手伸进她的钱包里,拿出那个信封。她把它递给达琳,达琳把它递给了我,我又把它递给了奥丝。奥丝把它放进了募捐箱里。
牧师数过捐款以后,宣布捐款数额稍稍超出了100美元。传教士很兴奋。他本没有期望能在我们这座小教堂里募捐到这多么的款项的。他说,“你们这座教堂里一定有很多富裕的人。”这句话猛然惊醒了我们!在那稍稍超出的100美元的款项中我们的捐款占了87美元。
我们是这座教堂里最富裕的家庭!难道传教士不是这么说的吗?从那天开始,我再也没觉得自己贫穷了。