In the kitchen of my mother's houses there has always been a wooden stand with a small notepad and a hole for a pencil.
在我母亲家的厨房里，总是有一个木架，上面有一个小记事本和一个放铅笔的洞。
I'm looking for paper on which to note down the name of a book I am recommending to my mother. Over forty years since my earliest memories of the kitchen pad and pencil, the current paper and pencil look the same as they always did. Surely it can't be the same pencil? The pad is more modern, but the wooden stand is definitely the original one.
我在找一张纸，上面写下我向母亲推荐的一本书的名字。自从我最初见到厨房的本子和铅笔之后，已经过去了四十多年，现在的纸和笔看起来和当初一样。肯定不是同一支笔吧？本子更现代，但木架绝对是原来的。
"I'm just amazed you still have the same stand for holding the pad and pencil after all these year." I say to her, walking back into the living-room with a sheet of paper and the pencil. "You still use a pencil. Can't you afford a pen?"
“我只是很惊讶，这么多年过去了，你仍然用同样的木架放拿着本子和铅笔。”我对她说，拿着一张纸和铅笔走进客厅。“你还用铅笔，买不起钢笔吗？”
My mother replies a little sharply. "It works perfectly well. I've always kept the stand in the kitchen. I never knew when I might want to note down an idea, and I was always in the kitchen in these days."
我妈妈有点尖锐地回答：“它很好写啊！我总是把木架放在厨房里。我不知道什么时候我会想记下一个想法，这些天我总是在厨房里。”
Immediately I can picture her, hair wild, blue housecoat covered in flour, a wooden spoon in one hand, the pencil in the other, her mouth moving silently. My mother smiles and says, "One day I was cooking and watching baby Pauline, and I had a brilliant thought，but the stand was empty. One of the children must have taken the paper. So I just picked up the breadboard and wrote it all down on the back. It turned out to be a real breakthrough for solving the mathematical problem I was working on."
我立刻就能想象出她的样子，头发蓬乱，蓝色的家常服上撒满了面粉，一只手拿着一个木勺，另一只手拿着铅笔，她的嘴巴在默默地动。妈妈笑着说：“有一天，我在做饭和看宝宝波琳，我有一个很好的想法，但木架是空的。一定是有个孩子拿了那张纸。所以我只好拿起面包板，把它都写在了背面。这对解决我正在做的数学问题来说是一个真正的突破。”
This story - which happened before I was born - reminds me how extraordinary my mother was, and is, as a gifted mathematician. I feel embarrassed that I complain about not having enough child-free time to work. Later, when my mother is in the bathroom, I go into her kitchen and turn over the breadboards. Sure enough, on the back of the smallest one, are some penciled marks I recognize as mathematics. Those symbols have traveled unaffected through fifty years, rooted in the soil of a cheap wooden breadboard, invisible exhibits at every meal.
这个故事——发生在我出生之前——让我想起，作为一名天才数学家，我的母亲是多么了不起。我感到尴尬的是，我抱怨没有足够的空闲时间（不用带孩子）来工作。后来，当我妈妈在卫生间时，我走进她的厨房，把面包板翻过来。果然，在最小的一块面包板背面，有一些可以认出是铅笔标记的数学符号。五十年来，这些符号从未受到影响，植根于廉价木制面包板的土壤中，每顿饭都有看不见的展品。
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