Unit5FourteenSteps课文翻译综合教程二.docVIP

Unit 5 Fourteen Steps Hal Manwaring They say a cat has nine lives,1 and I am inclined to think that possible since I am now living my third life and I’m not even a cat. My first life began on a clear, cold day in November 1934, when I arrived as the sixth of eight children of a farming family. My father died when I was 15, and we had a hard struggle to make a living. As the children grew up, they married, leaving only one sister and myself to support and care for Mother, who became paralyzed in her last years and died while still in her 60s. My sister married soon after, and I followed her example within the year. This was when I began to enjoy my first life. I was very happy, in excellent health, and quite a good athlete. My wife and I became the parents of two lovely girls. I had a good job in San Jose and a beautiful home up the peninsula in San Carlos. Life was a pleasant dream. Then the dream ended. I became afflicted with a slowly progressive disease of the motor nerves, affecting first my right arm and leg, and then my other side. Thus began my second life … In spite of my disease I still drove to and from work each day, with the aid of special equipment installed in my car. And I managed to keep my health and optimism, to a degree, because of 14 steps. Crazy? Not at all. Our home was a split-level affair with 14 steps leading up from the garage to the kitchen door. Those steps were a gauge of life. They were my yardstick, my challenge to continue living. I felt that if the day arrived when I was unable to lift one foot up one step and then drag the other painfully after it — repeating the process 14 times until, utterly spent, I would be through — I could then admit defeat and lie down and die.2 So I kept on working, kept on climbing those steps. And time passed. The girls went to college and were happily married, and my wife and I were alone in our beautiful home with the 14 steps. You might think that here walked a man of courage and s