My eyes were caught by an old letter. A thick stack, all sent from the United States. Some of the receiving addresses are in China, some in the UK, and some in Canada. The envelopes were yellowed and some were damaged, but the dark blue English handwriting on the envelopes was still as gorgeous as before. The recipients are all me, and the senders are all her—Caroline Todd.
Caroline Tad
The distant past burst out from the brittle letterhead, and in a daze, the passing years passed through my mind like countless nostalgic scenes from movies. The time is not really that long, but only about thirty years. However, thirty years is enough for a person to mature, and it is also enough for a person to forget many past events.
The words in the letter made time fly back, back to that summer night when the cicadas had calmed down. The campus is filled with the fragrance of lilac flowers, and the classrooms are filled with young laughter. After the intensive English training class for those who went abroad, a farewell party was held as usual. No one expected that foreign teacher Susan would play a recorded letter from her mother to the class at the party. At that time, the cassette recorder was the most advanced electronic device. Not to mention WeChat, there was not even email. This tape was prepared by Susan's mother several months ago and sent by American Airlines across the ocean.
Must be to take care of our hearing, Susan’s mother spoke very slowly and clearly every word in the recording. She said Susan told her that the Chinese students in her class were all young teachers and were more like friends than students. She hopes that Susan’s friends can also become her friends. She hopes to understand China and welcomes everyone to correspond with her. There are less than twenty students in the class, and I still don’t know how many people have written to her. Maybe it’s just me. A few days later, I just rashly sent a letter just like handing in my homework.
Soon, I received my first personal letter from overseas. Beautiful handwriting, three pages, meticulous, like a calligraphy sample. At that time, Caroline was working at an agency that helps people with disabilities in South Carolina, USA, and was the mother of six adult children. I should have called her Mrs. Tad, but she asked me to call her by her first name, as is the Western custom, and we called her Mother Susan at home. When my daughter was born, I received Caroline’s blessing. A pair of stuffed teddy bears she sent stayed with her daughter for many years. Baby girls wear pink and boys wear blue, and they give small silver spoons for birthdays. Western customs such as these, and the long letters from her, will be of great benefit to me in my future overseas life.
Xu Shi has been engaged in helping others for a long time. Raising six children has inspired all her maternal instincts. Her letters are both loving and patient. They are usually two to three pages long and can be up to five years in length. Page. This puts great pressure on me to reply. My life is dull and my English level is limited. I don’t know what to write. But she never lacked material, either telling about a party she had, or a job at hand, or recalling a past event, or explaining a custom. What she wrote most was about her writing a book. She was born and raised in South Carolina and has a special affection for South Carolina. She wants to write about South Carolina and introduce it to everyone in the world. For this purpose, she often drove on weekends through towns in South Carolina, and I often received beautiful landscape photos.
Caroline’s letters occasionally include photos of her and her family. In one of them, Susan is riding a horse, wearing an equestrian uniform, looking heroic. Behind her is the vast, green field of the 200-acre farm she and her husband own. After the English class ended, Susan and I had no contact again. It was Carolyn who let me know that something unexpected happened to Susan after she returned to the United States and she went through a very difficult time. Caroline didn't tell me the details, and I didn't ask. Regarding personal privacy, it all depends on how much the other party is willing to let you know. There is no need for extra curiosity. A sincere blessing is enough.
Even when I was away studying, Caroline kept in touch with me. In the year when I said goodbye to England, I threw aside my black square-top hat in a small attic in Oxford and wrote a letter to Caroline. The autumn colors were in full bloom at that time, and the university park outside the window was covered with fallen flowers. It was the harvest season, and it was a little desolate. Looking back on the hardships of studying for several years, I couldn’t help but sigh in my letter: Thank God, I finally graduated! She wrote back her congratulations and finally said lightly that it's good that you can think of God. She never talked to me about her religious beliefs, but she devoted her life to social welfare and relief work, and her love even spread to young people as far away as China. The kindness of his heart and the persistence of his kindness cannot help but move me.
Due to my laziness and lack of a fixed residence, my contact with Caroline was always intermittent. After knowing her for more than ten years and moving to Canada, I called her for the first time and let her hear my voice. She was so happy that she immediately asked for my new address and sent me a book about South Carolina she had written with her friend Sydney.
This is a book that condenses her many years of hard work. Over the years, she has frequently mentioned in her letters the places she has been and the photos she has taken. Where there's a will, there's a way, so happy for her.
The book is equipped with many photos that I am familiar with, and there are also her and Sydney's autographs on the title page. I opened the copyright page and saw that it was a reprint. At this time, she was not only the mother of six children, but also the grandmother of six grandchildren. They worked hard to write the book and traveled to various places. In addition to geographical information and scenic spots, they also included brief reviews and charts. This book is still on the Amazon bookshelf and has very high reviews.
I came to Canada and moved three times, and lost contact with her again. When Pope John Paul II was critically ill, I suddenly thought of Caroline. She sent me a commemorative envelope when Paul visited South Carolina shortly after he became king. I mentioned it to my colleagues at work, and they said that you can definitely get a good price by auctioning online. I said I'd better keep it for myself, as it's rare to preserve the fate between people. Some people come into your life with great vigor, but in the end they are just passers-by. Some people's footprints are light but indelible. But who is not a passerby? Even the person I was yesterday is a passer-by today in my life.
I think I should write a letter to Caroline again, but I don’t know if the address is correct. The inky blue handwriting of her replies always put me in a calm and happy mood. She should still be living in South Carolina, USA, and is a well-known writer and photographer, as well as Susan's mother. Susan was my foreign teacher thirty years ago. She went to China as an exchange student to study philosophy. She cried secretly because she couldn't understand Chinese, but she taught us to understand English. Today Susan and her family live, like Thoreau, away from people, and her farm is her Walden Pond.
After Susan left China, I never saw her again. As for her mother, Caroline, I have never seen her before, and maybe I will see her in this life.
……
After writing the above text, I was unwilling to give in. I dug out emails from several years ago from my email box and tried to contact Susan again. I received a reply two days later. Susan actually picked up my letter from the junk mail. She said that their little life was very happy, but her mother passed away two years ago at the age of 82. Caroline, Mrs. Tad, Mom Susan, you will always be in my memory.