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Every weekend for as long as I can remember, my father would get up on a Saturday,
在我能够记住的每个周末，我的父亲在周六起床后，
put on a worn sweatshirt and he'd scrape away at the squeaky old wheel of a house that we lived in.
会穿上一件旧T恤衫，他会刮掉我们所住的老房子的油漆。
I wouldn't even call it restoration; it was a ritual, catharsis.
我不能把它叫做修整，那是一种仪式，一种净化。
He would spend all year scraping paint with this old heat gun and a spackle knife,
他会用整整一年的时间来用他的热风枪以及抹墙粉刀来刮掉油漆，
and then he would repaint where he scraped, only to begin again the following year.
然后他会重新油漆他刮掉的部分，这只是为了能在来年重新开始。
Scraping and re-scraping, painting and repainting: the work of an old house is never meant to be done.
刮漆和再次刮漆，油漆和再次油漆，这所老房子的工作永远不会结束。
The day my father turned 52, I got a phone call.
当我父亲52岁的时候，我接到一通电话，
My mother was on the line to tell me that doctors had found a lump in his stomach
我母亲在线上告诉我说医生在他的腹腔发现一个肿块儿，
terminal cancer, she told me, and he had been given only three weeks to live.
癌症晚期，她这么跟我说，他只能活三周。
I immediately moved home to Poughkeepsie, New York,
我立即搬家到纽约Poughkeepsie，
to sit with my father on death watch, not knowing what the next days would bring us.
为我父亲临终看护，不知道第二天我们会发生些什么。
To keep myself distracted, I rolled up my sleeves,
为了让自己分散注意力，我卷起了袖子，
and I went about finishing what he could now no longer complete -- the restoration of our old home.
我去做他再也无法完成的事情--修整我们的老房子。
When that looming three-week deadline came and then went, he was still alive.
当那个无形的三周期限来到了又过去后，他还是活着。
And at three months, he joined me. We gutted and repainted the interior.
三个月后，他开始跟我一起，我们重新粉刷了内部。
At six months, the old windows were refinished, and at 18 months, the rotted porch was finally replaced.
六个月后，老窗户完成了，18个月的时候，破败的阳台也翻新了。
