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Soon after we returned from Europe, Bill offered to take me on another journey―this time to the place he called home.
从欧洲回国后不久，比尔又带我踏上另外一个旅程——回他的老家。
Bill picked me up at the airport in Little Rock on a bright summer morning in late June. We made our way through the Arkansas River Valley with its low-slung magnolia trees, and into the Ouachita Mountains, stopping at overlooks and dropping by country stores so Bill could introduce me to the people and places he loved. As dusk fell, we arrived, at last, in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
6月底一个明亮的夏日之晨，比尔开车到小石城机场接我。我们开车穿过木兰树点缀的阿肯色河峡谷，进入沃希托山脉，一路走走停停，有时停在观景台，有时下车看看乡村商店，比尔借此机会让我认识他喜欢的人与景点。直到薄暮将至，两人才到达温泉市。
Hot Springs was Virginia Cassidy Blythe Clinton Dwire Kelley's natural element. Bill's mother was raised in nearby Hope, eighty miles to the southwest. During World War II she attended nursing school in Louisiana, and that's where she met her first husband, William Jefferson Blythe.
温泉市的气质，正如比尔的母亲弗吉妮亚·卡西迪·布莱思·克林顿·德怀尔·凯利堪称相配。弗吉妮亚成长于附近的霍普市，在西南边八十英里处。二次大战期间，她到路易斯安那州的护校就读，在那里认识了第一任丈夫威廉·杰斐逊·布莱思。
After the war, they moved to Chicago and lived on the North Side, not far from where my parents were living. When Virginia became pregnant with Bill, she went home to Hope to wait for the baby. Her husband was driving down to see her when he had a fatal accident in Missouri in May of 1946. Virginia was a twenty-three-year-old widow when Bill was born on August 19, 1946. She decided to go to New Orleans to train to become a nurse anesthetist because she knew she could make more money that way to support herself and her new son. She left Bill in the care of her mother and father, and when she got her degree, she returned to Hope to practice.
战后，两人搬到芝加哥，住在北城，距我父母当时的住处不远。弗吉妮亚怀了比尔后，返回霍普待产，1946年5月，威廉从芝加哥开车回来看她，不幸在密苏里因车祸过世。二十三岁的弗吉妮亚成了寡妇，1946年8月19日生下比尔后，弗吉妮亚决定搬到新奥尔良，接受护理麻醉师训练，好赚更多的钱养活自己与儿子。她把比尔交给自己的父母照顾，待取得学位再返回霍普执业。
