André was fourteen when I left Europe.When I finished my job in the Taipei City Government and had time to live again, he was already an eighteen-year-old youth, 184 centimeters tall, with a driver's license, allowed to go in and out of bars, and a college student.The cute "baby fat" has long since disappeared on the face, the lines are sharp and angular, the eyes are quiet and deep, revealing a kind of independent distance, holding a red wine glass in his hand, sitting at the other end of the table, looking at it with a little "cold" you. I am extremely uncomfortable──my lovely Ann, where is she going?Where is the little boy who let me hug, let me kiss, let me hold hands, let me worry about my heart, and make my hair smell a little sweaty?

I approached him, he backed away; I want to talk to him, he said, talk about what?I asked eagerly, and he said, I am not your lovely Ann, I am me. I wanted to talk to him, but when I opened my mouth, I found that even if he wanted to, I didn't know what to say, because my eighteen-year-old son was already someone I didn't know.What was he thinking about?How does he see things?What does he care about, what doesn't he care about?What does he like and hate, why does he do this and that, what embarrasses him and what makes him crazy, how far my values ​​are from his values... I have no idea.

He is in Germany and I am in Hong Kong.Conversations on the phone can only go like this: Are you OK? OK. How is the school? no problem. ... When we met during the holidays, he was willing to give all his time to his friends. When we sat at the dinner table with me, he was silent, eyes, staring at the phone, fingers, busy sending messages. I know he loves me, but love does not mean liking, love does not mean knowing.Love is actually an excuse for many dislikes, ignorance, and incommunication.Because of love, normal communication seems unnecessary. No, I don't want to fall into this trap.It doesn't matter that I lost the little boy Ann, but I can know the mature Andre.I want to meet this person.

I want to meet this eighteen year old. So I asked him if he would like to write a column with me by correspondence.The condition is that once you agree, you must never give up halfway. He said yes.I still can't believe it, and asked many times, really?You know it's not a joke, the deadline is up, and you have to write even if there is a thunderbolt. I didn't think about publishing a book, and I didn't think about whether there would be readers. I only had one thought: through this method, I might be able to enter the world of an eighteen-year-old. So I was literally taken aback when letters from readers poured in from all over the world.One day, while queuing to pay the bill at a bookstore in Taipei, a middle-aged man came up to shake my hand and said in a low voice, "If it weren't for your article, my son and I would be strangers, because we don't know how to communicate with each other. The other party is talking." His expression was serious, and there were tears in his eyes.

Many parents, like him, photocopies the articles to read to their children, and then open the conversation as a family at the dinner table.Parents in the US and Canada have written in asking for an English version of our newsletter so that their English-speaking children can share it with them.Those who are children are often in their 30s and 40s and cannot communicate with their parents. Although there is love in their hearts, the love is frozen in years of silence, like a painful wound hidden without gauze. With so many letters from different age groups, I only know how many parents and children are in the same room but have nothing to talk about, they love each other deeply but don't know each other, they yearn for contact but can't find a bridge, and they are eager to express

But no language.Our correspondence, like a semaphore on a dark sea, is seen by other restless ships looking for a haven. The writing process is very hard.Andre and I speak Chinese, but he doesn't know Chinese.Therefore, each of our articles has to go through these procedures: 1. Andre wrote to me in English.His best writing is German, and my best writing is Chinese, so we each took a step forward and met halfway—in English. Second, I will translate it into Chinese.During the translation process, we had to discuss with him over the phone: what does this word mean?Why use this word and not that word?What is the German word for this word?Wouldn't the theme be clearer if the second paragraph was at the end?Am I misunderstanding you?Chinese readers may not be able to understand your argument, can you explain it in more detail?

3. I wrote a reply in English and passed it on to Andre so that he could reply. 4. I rewrite my English letter in Chinese—it can only be rewritten, not translated, and the translation will be broken. In the four procedures, we had a lot of discussions and debates.I often criticize his sloppy writing style, "not specific enough", and he is often impatient with my fault-finding and too much detail.In the process of writing, the differences in our life philosophies are highlighted: he regards writing as a "play", and I regard writing as a "job".There are also contrasts in our values ​​and attitudes towards life: he has three points of cynicism, two points of black humor, and five points of seriousness; I have eight points of seriousness and two points of intellectual suspicion.He laughed at me, and I studied him seriously.

To know an eighteen-year-old, you have to learn from the beginning.You have to let yourself go. The column was written for three full years, and there were many delays in the middle, but I finally persisted until the beginning and the end.Young readers who wrote to him sometimes asked him: "How can you communicate with your own mother like this? How is it possible?" Andre wrote back with four or two thousand dollars, "Dude, because of the royalties." I still don't know why he agreed in the first place, and I really feel incredible that he actually wrote it. three years.We are two generations separated by thirty years.We are also people from two countries, separated by Eastern and Western cultures.We might have swung apart like duckweeds on the water when he was eighteen years old, and we have been indifferent since then, but we made different attempts──I worked hard, and he returned the same hard work.I met the first eighteen-year-old in my life, and he also met his mother for the first time.

In the future journey of life, of course, we still have to be separated from each other—how can there be a long-term togetherness in life?But the semaphore at sea for three years is like gazing at the stars and full of moonlight, what more can I expect.