The Lesson of the Dining Room Table

Gregg Levoy

母亲家中有一张餐桌，因堆满了各式各样的东西——以前的杂志、账单、生日卡片、演唱会票根……而终年不见天日。直至有一天，一家人终于把它收拾得干干净净的，这时他们才发现，原来这些一直保留着的东西并没有紧紧抓住不放的必要……

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: 一直在积攒的；landsliding: 山崩的，塌方的，此处用于形容大堆大堆的纸；newsletter:（俱乐部、团体等给特定读者定期寄发的）通讯，简报；bank statement: 银行对账单；coupon: 优惠券；stub: （戏票等的）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. 从桌子任何一个角落里挑选出重要的几样东西，你就可以拼凑出我母亲这20年来都去过了哪儿。quadrant:四分之一，此处是指将桌子分成东西南北四个角落；geological: 地理的。

I can relate3. relate: 发生共鸣，认同。. 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。尽管你以为我早该学会如何轻装上路，但每一次搬家都让我的行李越来越多，尤其是在我从租客变为房主，从单身变为已婚的这个过程中。notch:等级；gradient: 倾斜度；transition:过渡，转变。The sheer gross tonnage of my possessions has correspondingly increased.5. sheer: （某物）之重，之大等（用于强调）；gross: 总的；tonnage: 吨位，载重量；correspondingly: 相应地，相对地。

Things simply have a way of piling up wherever they encounter a stationary object, like leaves blown against a fence,6. pile up: 堆积，积累；encounter: 偶遇，碰到；stationary: 不动的，静止的。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）酷似父亲或母亲。. 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: 拥挤的，挤满的；mound:（大）堆，（大）垛；rummage: 零星杂物，旧杂物。

“Mom, why don’t we go through all that stuff and clear it out10. clear out: 清除，腾空。?” 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: 使极度焦虑，使非常紧张。. 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: （不愿做某事时发出的）哼哼声；cowed: 被吓住的，被威胁的。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: 一叠，一堆；wrest: 攫取，夺过；glacial: 像冰川似的；creep:讨厌的人或物。

“Sure,” I said as nonchalantly15. nonchalantly: 若无其事地，平静地。as possible. When we’d succeeded in separating wheat from chaff16. separate wheat from chaff: 区分好的和坏的，区分有用的和没用的。, 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.