“I'm just amazed you still have the same stand for holding the pad and pencil after all these years.” I say to her, walking back into the living-room with a sheet of paper and the pencil. “You still use a pencil. Can't you afford a pen？”

　　My mother replies a little sharply, “It works perfectly well. I've always kept the stand in the kitchen. I never knew when I might want to note down an idea, and I was always in the kitchen in these days.”

　　Immediately I can picture her, hair wild, blue housecoat covered in flour, a wooden spoon in one hand, the pencil in the other, her mouth moving silently. My mother smiles and says, “One day I was cooking and watching baby Pauline, and I had a brilliant thought, but the stand was empty. One of the children must have taken the paper. So I just picked up the breadboard and wrote it all down on the back. It turned out to be a real breakthrough for solving the mathematical problem I was working on.”

　　This story—which happened before I was born-reminds me how extraordinary my mother was, and is, as a gifted mathematician. I feel embarrassed that I complain about not having enough child－free time to work. Later, when my mother is in the bathroom, I go into her kitchen and turn over the breadboards. Sure enough, on the back of the smallest one, are some pencilled marks I recognize as mathematics. Those symbols have travelled unaffected through fifty years, rooted in the soil of a cheap wooden breadboard, invisible(看不到的)exhibits at every meal.

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