我近幾天斷斷續續地用英文寫此心情回憶日記，內容實構虛構融於一爐。此篇散文尚未完成，打算會抽空自己再逐段翻譯成中文。

目前暫時略述其大意： 一位北京名校中上美女級的畢業生，負笈美國異鄉深造，博士學位垂手可得時，倏然憶起年幼時，夢想長大成人後當芭蕾舞星、當歌手等等，但年復一年逐夢也築夢，猶如爬上高樹，最後卻只能落腳於其中一根枝頭，應該歡呼夢想實現，還是感傷放棄了更多別的夢想呢？ 難道只能遙望其他美麗的樹枝興嘆嗎？

On a summery afternoon, Ying and Tina were chatting over late lunch meals in the open garden of a spacious Tai restaurant in a booming Midwestern downtown center. They had not seen each other since their getting together during a four-day stay in Washington, D.C. for presenting papers in two separate academic conferences. 

Ying flew to the United States immediately after graduating from a college famous for training government officials in Beijing around six years ago. Now she was entering into the final stage of her doctoral dissertation. Every piece of her life has gradually fallen into its place; a clear pattern seems to emerge in a jig-saw puzzle. Perhaps because Ying and Tina both majored in foreign literatures and languages in college, it is natural for them to reflect on all the footsteps left in the tunnel of time and distill those raw life moments into a few succinct metaphors. 

One of the memorable metaphors was springing out of the well of bottom of Ying’s heart: “When I was a little girl, I dreamed of so many things-to-be. I imagined growing up to become a ballet dancer, a singer, and whatever heroine you name.” “So did I,” nodded Tina. “The volumes of my life book have been rolled out as if I stood under a giant tree, wondering which branches were attractive to me. What fruits were hanging high up
over there in the branches for me to climb up the tree and fetch?” continued Ying in a pondering gaze, with her time telescope, into the far-away past of her childhood.  Looking into Ying's eyes, Tina followed with a good listener's gesture, “I see. I always wish that I could grow up faster to catch something already enjoyed by my older brothers and sisters.” 

“At long last, here I am,” Ying jerked her words in shorter sentences all of a sudden. “I get stuck in only one of the branches. I end up in sitting on the only one branch after long years of climbing up the tree.”