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My daughter would like to quit, she says. We both know the statistics are against her; most people who try to quit smoking do not succeed. There is a deep hurt that I feel as a mother. Some days it is a feeling of futility. I remember how carefully I ate when I was pregnant, how patiently I taught my daughter how to cross a street safely. For what, I sometimes wonder; so that she can wheeze through most of her life feeling half her strength, and then die of self-poisoning, as her grandfather did?
我女儿说她想要戒烟。我们都知道统计数字对她不利；大多数想要戒烟的人都没有成功。作为一位母亲，我深感痛苦。有时候，我有一种无能为力的感觉。我记得自己怀孕时，吃东西是多么小心，我又是多么耐心地教我的女儿怎样安全地过马路。有时候我会想，自己那样做是为了什么？难道是为了她今后大半辈子费力地挣扎着呼吸，然后像她外公那样自己把自己毒死吗？
But, finally, one must feel empathy for the tobacco plant itself. For thousands of years, it has been venerated by Native Americans as a sacred medicine. They have used it extensively—its juice, its leaves, its roots, its (holy) smoke—to heal wounds and cure diseases, and in ceremonies of prayer and peace. And though the plant as most of us know it has been poisoned by chemicals and denatured by intensive mono-cropping and is therefore hardly the plant it was, still, to some modern Indians it remains a plant of positive power. I learned this when my Native American friends, Bill Wahpepah and his family, visited with me for a few days and the first thing he did was sowing a few tobacco seeds in my garden.
但是最后，我们必须对烟草这种植物施以同情。几千年来，它都被美洲印第安人尊崇为一种圣药。他们广泛地使用烟草——它的汁、它的叶子、它的根和它的（神圣的）烟——来愈合伤口，治疗疾病，并将其用于祈祷以及和平的仪式中。尽管我们大多数人都知道这一植物已经被化学制品污染，并因为集约化也失去了其本性，因此几乎已经不是原来的样子了，但是一些现代的印第安人仍然把它看作一种拥有积极力量的植物。我是从我的印第安朋友比尔•沃培帕和他的家人那儿知道这一点的，他们来拜访过我几天，他做的第一件事就是在我的花园里播了些烟草种子。
