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I looked down at her purse with all its disconnected contents and remembered her visits to her home, rummaging through drawers and through closets.
我低头看着她包里所有互不相干的东西，想到她回家时翻寻抽屉和衣橱的情景。
Oh, Lord, I thought with sudden insight. "That walker and that purse are her home now."
“哦，上帝呀，”我茅塞顿开，“现在那助步车和那个大提包就是祖母的家。”
I began to understand that over the years my grandmother's space for living had diminished like melting butter—from endless fields and miles of freedom as a child and young mother to, with age, the constrictions of a house, then a small room in a nursing home and finally to the tightly clutched handbag and the bag on her walker.
我开始明白，在过去的几年里，祖母的生活空间像不断融化的黄油般渐渐缩小了，随着年龄的增长，她生活的空间从孩提时或初为人母时自由自在的广阔田野，渐渐变为一幢房子，再到疗养院里一个小小的房间，最后缩小到紧紧抓在手里的提袋和助步车上的提包。
When the family sent her to a nursing home, it was the toughest decision it had ever had to make. We all thought she would be secure there; we would no longer have to worry about whether she had taken her medicine, or left her stove on, or was alone at night.
把祖母送进疗养院是全家做出的最艰难的决定，我们都认为她在那里会很安全，我们不必担心她是否吃了药，是否关了火炉，晚上是否一个人在家。
But we hadn't fully understood her needs. Security for my grandmother was not in the warm room at the nursing home, with 24-hour attendants to keep her safe and well fed, nor in the family who visited and took her to visit in their homes. In her mind her security was tied to those things she could call her own—and over the years those possessions had dwindled away like sand dropping through an hourglass: first her car, sold when her eyes became bad and she couldn't drive; then some furnishings she didn't really need. Later it was the dogs she had trouble taking care of. And finally it would be her home when it became evident that she could never leave the nursing home again.
但是我们并没有完全理解她的需求。安全对于祖母来说并不是待在疗养院温暖的房间里、有24小时良好的监护和膳食，也不是家里的人去看望她并带她回家看看。在她看来，她的安全在于她所拥有的东西——几年来，这些东西已经一点一点从她身边消失，像沙漏里一点点流走的沙子：首先是她的车，在她视力下降到无法驾驶时被卖掉了；接着是一些实际上她用不着的家具；后来是那几只她没有能力喂养的狗；最后，当她显然再也无法离开疗养院时，她连房子也不需要了。
