2. 职称英语
  3. My mother’s hands are deep in cabbage leaves, her sleeves pushed up past her

My mother’s hands are deep in cabbage leaves, her sleeves pushed up past her

游客2023-12-17  62
问题    My mother’s hands are deep in cabbage leaves, her sleeves pushed up past her elbows, as she sifts through water, salt, and vegetable. Beneath her nails are saffron flakes of red pepper powder. My mother wears an apron; under it her stomach is full and round. The apron is blue with red borders. I remember she bought it one day at Woodward’s on sale.
   I sit at the kitchen table beneath a peach-painted ceiling and a chandelier with oversized plastic teardrops. Every now then I get up and walk over to the counter, peer into the yellow tub, watch, pretend to watch, and then sit down again. Across from me, the little knick-knacks my mother loves so much-ceramic flowers, Delfts-blue miniature vases, a figurine forever windblown -- are arranged carefully upon the window sill.
   My mother’s hands are thin-skinned, pale, spotted and freckled with age and sun. The nails are thick, almost yellow. A few strands of hair, not quite black, fall over her forehead and her mouth is slightly open, the tip of her tongue just visible between her teeth as she lifts and mixes the cabbage leaves. "Are you paying attention?" she wants to know, and I nod at ceramic flowers, Delfts-blue miniature vases, a figurine forever windblown.
   Kim chee is pickled cabbage. Friends always ask me for bottles of the stuff: Mama Kim’s special recipe, they tease. I pass this on the my mother and she grumbles and laughs, embarrassed, pleased.
   My mother’s hands lie in my lap and I touch them carefully, life them like small, live animals, fit them into the plans of my own hands, turn them over and think of crab-hunting as a child and a trail of overturned, shell-encrusted sea rocks.
   Once I told my mother that I would like to photograph her hands, and she peered down at them, lifted her hands up to her face suspiciously as if seeing them for the first time. "My hands? she asked, and I went and fetched some skin lotion from the bathroom. Her hands were too dry.
   I had her sit on the couch in the living-room. The couch was floral-patterned and she sat in the centre of it, awkward, distracted. I took the pictures, head-to-tee shots, some of her hands alone. They lay limply in her lap. She held one hand with the other. She didn’t know what else to do with them. I took the pictures. Every ten minutes or so she got up and walked to the kitchen, checked the oven, the various pots. My father walked by once, and joked, "How about my hands?"
   The cabbage leaves are washed and salted and rinsed. This much I remember. A winter’s sun floats in through the window, plays weakly with the plastic tear-drops, falls down onto the kitchen table, onto my own hands. I suppose they will soon look like hers.
   I get up, restless, lean over the counter, try to concentrate. Every year for the last five years or so I have asked my mother to teach me how to pickle cabbage. Every year I have watched her hands, seen the aprons change, the stomach grow more round -- the cabbage leaves are washed and salted and rinsed. This much I remember.
   I take the rolls of film to a friend who knows something about photography. He develops them and is impressed. He sees a small Asian woman, smiling hesitantly into a camera, lost among the flowers of living-room couches. She is tired and stiff. My friend doesn’t even notice her hands. He calls the photos "real", I call them "disappointing".
   The kim chee is just made so it is not quite ripe, but we eat a little of it at dinner, anyway. My father tells me his story about villagers who ran away during the war, as the bombs came down, with earthenware kim ehee pots in their arms. It is favourite, not quite-ripe kim thee story.
   When the winter sunlight comes through the kitchen window, tear-refracted onto my own hands. I stop writing and put down my pen. My mother asks, "What are you writing?" And I tell her that I am writing about kim chee. She laughs, "You don’t even know how to make it".
   The rice, the bulgogi, the chap chee are eaten. The kim chee is returned to its plastic ice-cream container. My mother and my father tell more stories to each other as I clear the table. They speak quickly in their own language, animated, alive. For a few moments I am forgotten, the daughter who would be bored by such stories. I put the dishes away. Strange, that it has never been strange not to understand them.
   I go through the photographs once again, wondering what it is that is missing or that I’m not seeing. I spread them out onto the kitchen table. My mother looks over my shoulder and makes a sound, a familiar, all-purpose clicking of the tongue. "All that film...", she says as she walks back to the stove.
   I look at the photographs and I look at my mother in her woodward’s apron, her hands holding chopsticks, wooden spoons, the handles of pots and pans. I look at her hands and they are alive. They speak quickly. And this, I guess, is all I really need to remember. [br] What’s the attitude of the author towards her mother?
选项 A、The author looks down upon her mother.
B、The author is full of love for her mother.
C、The author is full of pity for her mother.
D、The author is bored with her mother.
答案 B
解析 该题问：作者对她母亲的态度是什么?A项意为“作者瞧不起她的母亲”；B项意为“作者深深热爱她的母亲”；C项意为“作者对母亲很怜悯”；D项意为“作者厌烦她母亲”。该文从第一段开始逐步描述她母亲腌制咸菜的样子、动作，到作者把母亲的手放在自己掌上端详，联想拿护肤液滋润母亲干枯的双手都表明作者对母亲充满了爱。从第七段开始摄影照片：全身照、双手照，一切都为了“永久的留念、纪念和怀念”，是爱的体现，中间插入了朝鲜咸菜和当代人民血肉相连的故事。炸弹轰炸，村民逃离时怀里抱着朝鲜咸菜罐。这是作者所以选择母亲腌制朝鲜咸菜，及其双手，他们吃生的到熟的朝鲜咸菜，是把其爱升华到臻化的程度。综上原因，B项内容为正确选项。
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