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I was angry with him for that, but angrier with myself for having become one of those ancient bores whose highly selective memories of the past become transparently dishonest even to small children. I tried to break the habit, but must have failed. Between us there was a dispute about time. He looked upon the time that had been my future in a disturbing way. My future was his past, and being young, he was indifferent to the past.
我对他很生气，但我更气愤的是我自己居然变成了一个令人讨厌的老古董，专门挑过去的某些事情回忆，这些回忆显然连孩子们也觉得不可信。我曾试着改掉这个习惯，但肯定是没改掉。关于“时代”，我们之间有着很大的分歧。儿子用一种令人不安的眼光看待那些曾是我的未来的年代，我的未来便是他的过去，可因为年轻，他对过去毫无兴趣。
As I hovered over my mother's bed listening for some signals from her childhood, I realized that this same dispute had existed between her and me. When she was young, with life ahead of her, I had been her future and resented it. Instinctively, I wanted to break free, and cease being a creature defined by her time. Well, I had finally done that, and then with my own children I had seen my exciting future becoming their boring past.
当我徘徊在母亲的床边，接收着她那从遥远的童年发出来的零星信号时，我意识到，同样的分歧也曾存在于我和她之间。当她年轻时，生活展现在她面前，对于她而言，我就是她的未来，但我却讨厌这种状况。我本能地想要挣脱，想要自由，希望我不再被她的时代所界定。我最后成功地做到了这一点，可从我自己的孩子身上，我却看到自己那振奋人心的未来正在变成他们乏味的过去。
These hopeless end-of-the-line visits with my mother made me wish I had not thrown off my own past so carelessly. We all come from the past, and children ought to know what it was that went into their making, to know that life is a braided cord of humanity stretching up from time long gone, and that it cannot be defined by the span of a single journey from diaper to shroud.
母亲在生命的最后阶段经历着这些不抱希望的探望，这使我后悔不该那么轻易地抛弃往日的时光。每个人都来自于过去，孩子们应当知道他们传承了什么，他们应该知道，生命是由过去到未来、由无数人的生命编织起来的一条人类共同纽带，而不是被简单定义为一个个体由生到死的生命过程。
