我会提醒父亲咖啡是怎样不喜欢在草地上走。我们在墨尔本有个大院子，每次我们扔完球，咖啡就会沿着园子边缘的砖路跑向最接近球的那个位置，然后轻手轻脚地踏着草坪去捡球，最后又跑回到砖路上。
母亲、妹妹和我按摩父亲的胳膊和腿来防止他的肌肉萎缩时，妈妈经常会说父亲有三个女人为他按摩，因此他是世上最幸运的男人。这时，我总会插一句：“现在你所需要的就是咖啡来舔你的脚，来一个脚部按摩！”无论我重复说过多少遍，我们全家都会捧腹大笑。
父亲能回澳洲之前，差不多接受了整整一年的全面物理治疗和康复练习，那次回家的情形让我终生难忘。咖啡自然是在那儿等待父亲，但是，咖啡不知道父亲已经不如以前站得稳当了。一看到父亲，它就迅速跳入父亲的怀抱，这几乎把父亲撞倒。父亲似乎并不介意这些：他脸上的微笑是我所见过的最灿烂的笑容，他眼眶里的泪水表达了他所有的感情。
如今，回想起来简直是不可思议，在我家最艰难的时刻，居然是一只笨小狗的滑稽故事使大家免于精神崩溃。但是，这就是事实。并不是只有聪明的狗才能拯救主人，咖啡就是一个活生生的例子。
Rich family
富裕的家庭
I’ll never forget Easter 1946. I was fourteen, my little sister, Ocy, was twelve and my older sister, Darlene, was sixteen. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with no money and seven school-aged kids to raise.
By 1946, my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home. A month before Easter, the pastor of our church announced that a special holiday offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.
When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy fifty pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save twenty dollars of our grocery money for the offering. Then we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn’t listen to the radio, we’d save money on that month’s electric bill. Darlene got as many house-and yard-cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us babysat for everyone we could. For fifteen cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three potholders to sell for a dollar. We made twenty dollars on potholders. That month was one of the best of our lives.
The night before Easter, we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn’t care that we wouldn’t have new clothes for Easter; we had seventy dollars for the sacrificial offering. We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn’t own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn’t seem to matter how wet we got.
We sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about our old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich.
When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting in the second row from the front. Mom put in the ten-dollar bill, and each of us kids put in a twenty-dollar bill.
We sang all the way home from church. At lunch, Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon, the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn’t say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp twenty-dollar bills, one ten-dollar bill and seventeen one-dollar bills.
Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn’t talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling poor. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn’t have our Mom and our late Dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night. We had two knives that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn’t have a lot of things that other people had, but I’d never thought we were poor.
That Easter day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor, I thought. I didn’t like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed — I didn’t even want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!
We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally, on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn’t know. We’d never known we were poor. We didn’t want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn’t talk on the way.
At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun-dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said one hundred dollars would put a roof on a church. The minister added, “Can’t we all sacrifice to help these poor people?” We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.
Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene, Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering.
When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over one hundred dollars. The missionary was excited. He hadn’t expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, “You must have some rich people in this church.” Suddenly it struck us! We had given eighty-seven dollars of that “little over one hundred dollars.”
We were the rich family in the church! Hadn’t the missionary said so? From that day on, I’ ve never been poor again.
我永远忘不了1946年的复活节。那一年我14岁，妹妹奥丝12岁，姐姐达琳16岁。我们和母亲住在一起，我们四个人都知道该如何在所得很少的情况下过日子。我的父亲在5年前去世了，没给母亲留下一分钱，只给她留下了7个正在上学的孩子。
到1946年，我的姐姐们都结了婚，哥哥们也都离开了家。复活节前的一个月，我们教堂的牧师宣布，要为帮助穷困家庭进行一次特殊的节日募捐。他请每个人节省些并做出一点牺牲。
我们回到家后，就开始讨论应该怎样做。我们决定买50磅的马铃薯，并用它维持这个月的生活。这样，我们就可以节省下20美元的食品费作为捐款捐献出去。接着，我们又想到，如果我们尽可能不点灯，不听收音机，就能缩减那个月的电费开支。达琳尽可能多地担负起房间和院子的清洁工作，而我们两人则尽可能替别人照看孩子。又因为15美分足以使我们买到够做3块热锅布垫的棉线，并将它们卖到1美元。于是我们通过做这些布垫子赚到了20美元。那个月是我们生活中最快乐的一个月。
复活节的前一天晚上，我们都兴奋得睡不着觉。我们不在乎复活节没有新衣服；我们为募捐积攒了70美元。我们迫不及待地想去教堂！星期天早上，大雨如注。虽然我们没有伞，而且教堂离我们家有一英里多的路程，淋得多湿对我们来说无关紧要。
然而，我们充满自豪地坐在教堂里。我听到一些青少年谈论我们的旧衣服。我看着他们身上的新衣服，却觉得自己很富有。
募捐开始的时候，我们坐在前面第二排的座位上。妈妈塞进一张10美元的钞票，我们每个孩子各塞进了1张20美元的钞票。
我们从教堂回家的时候一路唱着歌。吃午饭的时候，妈妈给了我们一个意外的惊喜。她买了一打鸡蛋，我们便拥有了复活节鸡蛋和煎马铃薯！那天下午晚些时候，牧师开着他的汽车来到我们家。妈妈走到门口和他谈了一会儿，回来的时候手里拿着一个信封。我们问她那是什么，但是她什么也没说。她打开信封，从里面掉出一沓钞票，分别是3张崭新的20美元、1张10美元和17张1美元。