The Lesson of the Dining Room Table

Gregg Levoy

母親家中有一張餐桌，因堆滿了各式各樣的東西——以前的雜志、賬單、生日卡片、演唱會票根……而終年不見天日。直至有一天，一家人終于把它收拾得干干凈凈的，這時他們才發現，原來這些一直保留著的東西并沒有緊緊抓住不放的必要……

My mother has a dining room table that no one has seen for nearly 20 years, though it sits right in the middle of her dining room.

This is because for 20 years she’s used it as a cross between an archive and a land fill, burying it beneath ever-accumulating and occasionally landsliding heaps of paper—magazines, newsletters,bills, bank statements, coupons, concert stubs, birthday cards,articles, advertisements, copies of itineraries for vacations she took back in the 1990s, and baby pictures of grandchildren who are now paying off college loans.1. cross: 事物的混合，混合物； land fill:垃圾填埋所；ever-accumulating: 一直在積攢的；landsliding: 山崩的，塌方的，此處用于形容大堆大堆的紙；newsletter:（俱樂部、團體等給特定讀者定期寄發的）通訊，簡報；bank statement: 銀行對賬單；coupon: 優惠券；stub: （戲票等的）存根，票根；itinerary: 日程，行程表。You could take a core sample from any quadrant of that table and have a complete geological record of the past two decades of my mother’s life.2. 從桌子任何一個角落里挑選出重要的幾樣東西，你就可以拼湊出我母親這20年來都去過了哪兒。quadrant:四分之一，此處是指將桌子分成東西南北四個角落；geological: 地理的。

I can relate3. relate: 發生共鳴，認同。. I’ve moved 23 times in 38 years, and though you’d think this would teach me to travel light, each move has instead been a notch up on an ever-increasing gradient of complexity,especially as I transitioned from house-renter to homeowner,single to married.4. 在38年中，我搬了23次家。盡管你以為我早該學會如何輕裝上路，但每一次搬家都讓我的行李越來越多，尤其是在我從租客變為房主，從單身變為已婚的這個過程中。notch:等級；gradient: 傾斜度；transition:過渡，轉變。The sheer gross tonnage of my possessions has correspondingly increased.5. sheer: （某物）之重，之大等（用于強調）；gross: 總的；tonnage: 噸位，載重量；correspondingly: 相應地，相對地。

Things simply have a way of piling up wherever they encounter a stationary object, like leaves blown against a fence,6. pile up: 堆積，積累；encounter: 偶遇，碰到；stationary: 不動的，靜止的。and a house is a stationary object, even if it’s a mobile home. Most wandering people travel light, living in tents and on saddles, and their primary possessions—herds—move by themselves.7. wandering: 流浪的，漂泊的；saddle:鞍座，鞍具；herd: 牧群，畜群。

My brother Ross and I recently flew to New York to pay my mother a visit—at the time I was preparing to move yet again—and I was confronted, once again, with the evidence that my mother is the block off which I am a chip8. be a chip off the block: 〈口〉（外貌或性格）酷似父親或母親。. On our first night there, Ross and I couldn’t help noticing the heaving mounds of rummage where her dining room table used to be.9. heaving: 擁擠的，擠滿的；mound:（大）堆，（大）垛；rummage: 零星雜物，舊雜物。

“Mom, why don’t we go through all that stuff and clear it out10. clear out: 清除，騰空。?” Ross said.

“Oh, no no no no no no no...,” my mother said. “No. Uh-uh.Don’t touch it.”

The next afternoon, when she couldn’t find a bill she may or may not have paid, Ross suggested it might be entombed11. entomb: 埋葬，掩埋。somewhere in the dining room and that perhaps we should have a look at what’s there. “Besides,” he said, “all those piles are clearly stressing you out12. stress out: 使極度焦慮，使非常緊張。. Why suffer anymore?” My mother only let out a long worried groan, cast a cowed glance in the direction of the dining room,13. groan: （不愿做某事時發出的）哼哼聲；cowed: 被嚇住的，被威脅的。and shook her head. “Are you boys hungry?”

But on our last night there, my mother walked up to us with a small stack of unopened mail, which she had wrested from the glacial creep at the western edge of the dining room table, and said, “Help me go through this.”14. a stack of: 一疊，一堆；wrest: 攫取，奪過；glacial: 像冰川似的；creep:討厭的人或物。

“Sure,” I said as nonchalantly15. nonchalantly: 若無其事地，平靜地。as possible. When we’d succeeded in separating wheat from chaff16. separate wheat from chaff: 區分好的和壞的，區分有用的和沒用的。, I said, “Well, that’s one less thing to worry about. Want to knock off another little stack? If it’s too upsetting, we can just stop.”

My mother led the way, walking into the dining room the way an animal trainer might enter a cage with tigers in it. Ross and I came in behind her and, after a moment’s collective pause,17he reached for a stack on one side of the table.

“No!” my mother said sharply, then softened. “Let’s start at the other end. That’s where the older stuff is.”

In exactly one hour, we made our way through that entire landscape of litter,18my mother continually shaking her head and saying, “Why did I keep all this? What was I thinking?” We tossed 95 percent of it into paper shopping bags, a dozen of them, and when I asked what she wanted us to do with them, she surprised us all by saying, “Put it in the incinerator.”19

When I returned from that mission, I found her leaning reverently over the newly excavated dining room table,whose surface she had literally not seen in two decades.20She had a bottle of glass cleaner in one hand and a paper towel in the other, and was massaging the tabletop.

“I forgot how beautiful this table is,” she said.

When I returned home, inspired if not sobered by the visit with my mother (and in preparation for moving, again), I waded through my own accumulated piles, garbage bags at the ready.21I sold or gave away half my possessions, and moved into a smaller house. And though it was surprisingly untraumatic to downsize—and it certainly made moving cheaper and easier—the act of simplifying was still a kind of chaos for me, the same way slowing down can be boat-rocking for those used to living at feverpitch.22

But if you’re standing at the edge of a cliff,23progress can be de fined as taking a step backward.