By Cai Yi

It felt like taking care of another child when my elderly father came to live with me.That night he went to bed at 9 pm,I would slip into my bedroom and enjoy a few moments of reading and writing before my own bedtime around 11:30.

When I was about to fall asleep,my old father opened my door and barged in,loudly demanding that it was already morning and that he wanted breakfast.It was actually midnight,as I turned on the light to look at my watch.

“What a life!” I moaned silently.But foreseeing the destined failure to reason with him,I just took him by the arm and helped him to the kitchen,pretending everything was OK.

After meeting his needs with my filial offering of hot milk,I lifted all the curtains to show him the total darkness outside,telling him again and again that daybreak was still far away.I led him to see his caregiver,A’ni,who was sleeping deeply after her heavy workload during the day.(It would be brutal to wake her up at this hour.)

老父亲住进我家，我似乎又回到当年照顾儿子的岁月。

他晚上九点准时上床，我内心窃喜，赶快回自己房间，享受片刻阅读写作时光，十一点半左右熄灯就寝。当我刚要迈入梦乡时，父亲推门迈入我房间，大声宣布：“天亮了，我要吃东西。”

我扭开床头灯，看手表，刚十二点，暗自叫苦：“这以后的日子该怎么过？”我知道，这不是讲道理的时刻。

我隐藏内心的不安，亲热地挽起父亲手臂，带他走进厨房，先冲大半杯热牛奶，满足他的需求，然后掀起房内各窗帘，看窗外一片漆黑，反复强调：“天没亮，还是半夜呢。”再带他看呼呼大睡的看护阿妮，阿妮白天认真照顾父亲，夜间难得睡个好觉，不忍心叫醒她。

“看，阿妮在睡觉，大家都在睡觉。”在漆黑的家逛了一圈后，带他回房，斜躺床上，听我的“放松诱导词”。

我一手轻抚父亲的头，一手握住父亲的手，用稳定、低沉又缓慢的语调说：“请将眼睛闭起来，眼睛一闭起来，你就开始放松了……”

没多久，父亲原本紧张的表情变得柔和，呼吸变轻，在我掌心的指头也放松了，他发出均匀的鼾声，然后我蹑手蹑脚走回自己房间，就如当年悄悄走出四岁儿子的房间。

我再看表，十二点四十五分。我用四十五分的耐心换回下半夜的完整睡眠，没有辩论，不用争吵，在安定父亲的过程中，我的焦虑也得以缓解。

“See? A’ni is sleeping.Everybody is sleeping.”

We walked along back to his bedroom.He finally laid down,listening in bed to my words of relaxation.

“Please close your eyes; close them,good,and now you feel relaxed…” I said slowly in a low voice,as I touched my father’s hair with one hand and held his hand with the other.

Soon his taut face softened,and so did his breath—I felt his fingers in my hand become relaxed.He snored steadily.When I left his room on my tiptoes,I remembered how I walked exactly the same way out of my four-year-old son’s bedroom.

I looked at the watch again and it was 12:45.With no argument or debate,I patiently spent only fortyfive minutes putting my father back to bed and slept soundly for the rest of the night.My anxiety was gone with his.

Later,I taught my father to sing songs and nursery rhymes during the day.He loved these old songs:“Time Will Pass Us,” “Time for the Little Lambs to Go Home,” “Su Wu the Shepherd,” and so on.Usually,I would learn the songs first with the aid of numbered musical notation before teaching my father and A’ni.A’ni was a fast learner in music and she soon shouldered the new task of teaching him songs after dinner.

As for the nursery rhymes,most of them came from a thick book titledChinese Nursery Rhymeswhich includes more than 1,500 songs.I singled out some simple and catchy rhymes and printed them on A4 paper so that my father could read them.We would learn them in the morning when his mind was comparatively clearer.I bought the book a long time ago for my toddler son to learn Chinese; back then I had no idea that 30 years later it would be opened again for my father.

We all know that many things pass down from generation to generation,but I’ve learned that they can pass back “up.”

To my surprise,my father could articulate some tricky rhymes with his strong accent.But that was only in the beginning.With the further mental decline,he could only deal with the simpler doggerel like “With your big head,big head,sudden rains are never a dread.”

Together we said it loud,both tapping the table to keep the rhythm and make it more fun.I saw the innocent joy on my father’s face,while he took no notice of the sadness in my foggy eyes.He knew nothing about how I missed my lost mother,my faraway son,and the man he used to be,in the remote past,teaching his threeyear-old boy rhymes as simple as these.It was too much for him to know.

Alone I heard a sound deep in my heart,like the break of a sand grain,or an echo in the silence of boundless space.

(FromForget Who I Am,Beijing United Publishing Co.,Ltd.Translation:Wang Xiaoke)

白天，我带父亲做功课，主要是歌曲、数来宝的反复练习。歌曲都是父亲喜欢的，如《青春舞曲》《小小羊儿要回家》《苏武牧羊》等。

通常我先按歌本简谱学唱，然后教父亲，也教看护阿妮。阿妮音感特别好，一学就会，很快，她可承接饭后带父亲练唱的责任。

至于数来宝，几乎取材自《中国儿歌》，厚厚一本，收集了一千五百多首各地儿歌，我从中挑选简单容易上口的，用粗黑字体打印在A4 纸上，方便父亲阅读。每天上午，他头脑清醒时，是数来宝教学时间。

此书是为儿子学中文而买，当时我万万料不到，这本书历经三十年后会用在老父亲身上。

原来，多少事物代代相传，顺着传，也可倒着传。

刚开始，有浓重口音的父亲仍能把“端汤上塔，塔滑汤洒，汤烫塔”说得字正腔圆，令我好生惊讶；随着他的脑力退化，只能应付“大头大头，下雨不愁，人家有伞，我有大头”这样的打油诗。

说数来宝时，我和父亲的声调都非常高亢，还一起敲打桌面增添节奏热闹，父亲满脸的天真烂漫，他看不见我眼眶中的怆然热泪，也不懂我怀念天上母亲、远方儿子、过往童年和三岁时他教我唱颠倒歌“胡说话，话说胡……”那颗人世悠悠之心。

这些都太复杂了，父亲不懂。

只有我听见内心深处的声音，不知是瞬间碎裂的沙尘，还是旷宇寂寂的回音？（摘自《忘了我是谁》北京联合出版公司）