遺愿的力量

By all appearances， Barbara Bruce Ross was living the life many women dream of. She was a financial rock star， working on Wall Street and bringing in a six-figure salary. Shed leave the office when the market closed at 4 p.m.， make a stop at 1）Neiman Marcus and maybe take a yoga class—then shed make her way home to her very successful husband and an apartment overlooking Manhattan.

But success and happiness dont always travel in pairs—that seemingly perfect life was 2）crumbling from the inside. With her marriage on shaky ground， Barbara found herself spending more and more time in the safest place she could find： at her aging grandmothers side， trying to figure out what she was missing in her life.

“My grandmother saw how unhappy I was，”Barbara recalled. “I was trying to 3）numb my pain by hanging out in New York Citys party scene， and Gram didnt like that. She said， ‘Maybe you need something else to do. And then she pulled out two boxes of notebooks filled with page after page of elegant script and told me to take them home.”

顯然，芭芭拉·布魯斯·羅斯過著許多女人夢寐以求的生活。她是金融界的一顆“搖滾巨星”，在華爾街工作，拿著六位數的薪資。股市下午4點收市，她便可以離開辦公室，在內曼·馬庫斯百貨里逗留一會兒，或是去上節瑜伽課——然后回家，回到她成功的丈夫身邊，回到那間可以俯瞰曼哈頓的公寓里。

但成功與幸福并不總是如影隨形——那看似完美的生活正從內部分崩離析。隨著婚姻的搖搖欲墜，芭芭拉發現自己花上越來越多的時間呆在她能找到的最安全的地方：在她年邁的祖母身邊，并試圖理清她的生活里到底錯失了什么。

“我的祖母看到了我有多不開心，”芭芭拉回憶到。“我常流連于紐約的各種瘋狂派對，試圖以此麻痹自己的痛苦，但祖母并不贊同。她說：‘也許你需要做點其它的。然后，她拖出兩箱筆記本，那筆記本里一頁接一頁地滿載著優雅的手跡，祖母讓我把這些筆記本帶回家。”

The notebooks were filled with formulas for lotions and creams that her grandmother had begun creating at home in the 1960s. The ingredients for each of these 4）therapeutic elixirs had come from her garden—a 5）floral playground where Barbaras fondest childhood memories lived.

“I got a lot of bee stings，” Barbara said with a smile， “but even those are fond memories. My grandmother would always have some sort of 6）balm to 7）soothe over the pain—and she would sing these sweet lullabies as she lovingly applied them. ”

For her grandmother—Alice Bruce， these lotions would eventually become her own restorative cure. At the age of 49， when her husband—Barbaras grandfather—passed away unexpectedly， Alice poured herself into her home remedies， eventually opening a store in Greenwich， Connecticut， where she sold her 8）fragrant creams. Decades passed， Alice grew ill and the store would ultimately shut down.

But the formulas of her 9）home-grown beauty lotions would survive—written in those notebooks that she had given to Barbara. Just as she had done so many years before， 10）gram was offering a solution to relieve Barbaras pain.

筆記上記滿了各種乳液和面霜的配方，那些都是上世紀60年代芭芭拉的祖母在家中開始自創的。每種藥效乳霜的配料都來自于她的花園——一個植滿花草的樂園，那里有著芭芭拉最喜歡的童年記憶。

“我老被蜜蜂蜇傷，”芭芭拉笑著說，“但即便如此那些也是美好的回憶。我的祖母總會用某些藥膏來平緩我的疼痛——當她一邊親昵地為我敷藥時，還一邊哼唱著那些優美的搖籃曲。”

對于她的祖母——愛麗絲·布魯斯來說，這些乳液最終變成了她自己的復元靈藥。在她49歲時，她的丈夫——芭芭拉的祖父——意外身亡，愛麗絲全身心投入到她的自制膏藥事業中，最終在康涅狄格州的格林威治開了一家店，在那兒賣她的芳香面霜。……